Chapter 12: Evaluation Night
The whiskey glass was half-empty, catching the yellow glow of the single bulb overhead. Rooster’s fingers were steepled beside it, her knuckles like worn saddle leather. The air in the small office was thick, a permanent stew of leather conditioner, dusty ledgers, and the sharp, sweet note of the whiskey.
Amy stood just inside the warped door, her heart a trapped bird against her ribs. She’d been summoned by a single nod from Jil after dinner. No explanation.
And then she saw Emily.
Emily, the cheerful, capable head cowgirl, was bent over the massive oak desk, her forehead pressed to the polished wood. Her jeans and underwear were piled around her booted ankles. Her bare backside was already a deep, angry pink, crosshatched with the beginnings of bruises.
“Shut the door, Carter,” Rooster said, her voice low and deliberate. The creak of the hinges was obscenely loud.
Amy obeyed, the latch clicking into place with finality.
Rooster didn’t look at her. Her eyes were on Emily’s back, on the tremble in the girl’s calves. “Counting,” Rooster stated.
“Twelve,” Emily whispered into the woodgrain, her voice thick.
A heavy, polished wooden paddle rested on the desk next to the ledgers. Rooster picked it up. It was a fearsome thing, dark with age and use, its surface smooth from generations of grip. She didn’t swing it like someone in a rage. She lifted it with a deliberate, almost ceremonial care.
It cracked down on Emily’s right cheek with a sound like a gunshot in the small room.
Emily jolted, a sharp gasp hissing through her teeth. Her fingers curled against the desktop.
“Thirteen,” she choked out.
Rooster’s gaze shifted, finally landing on Amy. Her eyes were the color of flint. “Jeans down. Over the desk next to her. Now.”
The command brooked no hesitation. Amy’s fingers felt numb, clumsy, as she fumbled with her belt buckle—the new one, stiff and still unfamiliar. She heard the rustle of denim, the soft snick of the button, and then the cooler air of the room hit her skin as she pushed everything down to her knees. The previous day’s soreness from Dusty’s hands flared anew, a deep, bruised reminder as she shuffled forward, the denim hobbling her steps.
The edge of the desk pressed into her hipbone. She bent, mimicking Emily’s posture, her cheek meeting the cool, varnished oak. She could smell the lemon oil used to polish it, mixed with the salt of sweat. Emily’s ragged breathing was just inches away.
“You’re late, Amy,” Rooster said, her voice echoing right behind her. “Not to this room. To understanding. This is a place of order. You watch. You learn. You feel the cost of stepping out of line.”
The paddle rested for a moment on Amy’s untouched skin. The wood was surprisingly warm.
“What was the count, Emily?” Rooster asked.
“Thirteen,” Emily repeated, her voice strained.
Crack.
The pain was a lightning bolt, a shockwave of pure, concussive force that drove the air from Amy’s lungs. It wasn’t the sharp sting of a hand, nor the targeted bite of a crop. This was deeper, a blunt trauma that reverberated through her entire pelvis. A strangled sound escaped her throat.
“Fourteen,” Emily said, her own voice gaining a thread of steel.
Crack. This one landed on Amy’s other side. The world dissolved into a white-hot burst of sensation. Her legs tensed, her toes curling inside her boots.
“Fifteen.”
Rooster was a machine. She moved between them with a calm, terrifying efficiency. The paddle fell on Emily’s left cheek, then on Amy’s right. The impacts were measured, evenly spaced, allowing the fire to fully bloom before stoking it again. The air filled with the rhythmic, sickening thwack of wood on flesh, punctuated by sharp inhales and bitten-off cries.
Amy bit down on her own lip, tasting copper. She focused on a knot in the wood grain, her vision blurring. Each blow seemed to compress her spine, driving her deeper into the desk. The comparison was unavoidable. With Dusty, the pain had been a path to something else, a chaotic, private transaction. This was public, judicial. This was about the ranch. About Rooster’s law.
“Twenty-one,” Emily gasped, and her voice broke on the number.
Crack. The paddle landed on Amy’s upper thigh, a line of fire so acute she saw stars. A sob clawed its way up her throat.
“Twenty-two.” Emily was crying now, proper tears dripping onto the wood below her face. Her bravado was gone, stripped away by the relentless, impersonal rhythm.
Rooster paused. The only sounds were Emily’s ragged weeping and the hum of the old lightbulb. She rested the paddle on Amy’s burning skin. “You see, Amy?” she said, almost conversational. “It’s not about how much you can take. It’s about how much the ranch can take from you. How much you’re willing to give to the order of things.”
She lifted the paddle again. Emily flinched, a full-body shudder.
But Rooster brought it down on Amy again.
Crack.
“Twenty-three!” Emily wailed, the number dissolving into a helpless flow of tears. She slumped against the desk, her body going limp, defeated. The fight was gone.
Rooster watched her for a long moment, then shifted her full attention to Amy. The next five blows came in a steady, unforgiving succession, all for Amy alone. They landed on the already-tender landscape of her backside, each impact layering a new dimension of pain over the last—a deep, bone-deep ache that promised to linger for days.
Amy stopped trying to be quiet. A low, animal moan escaped her with each strike. She gripped the far edge of the desk until her knuckles were white, anchoring herself against the tide of pure sensation. The world narrowed to the wood beneath her cheek, the smell of sweat and lemon oil, and the devastating crack that shattered her composure again and again.
Finally, it stopped.
The silence that followed was a physical presence, ringing with absence. Amy’s entire universe was the roaring heat in her rear. She heard Rooster set the paddle back on the desk with a soft thud.
“Get up. Both of you.”
Moving was an agony. Amy pushed herself upright, her muscles protesting, her jeans scraping against the brutalized skin as she pulled them up. The fabric felt like sandpaper. She couldn’t look at Emily, but she heard the other girl’s shuddering breaths, the fumble of clothing.
Emily stood, her face blotchy and wet, eyes downcast. She looked younger than her twenty-one years, hollowed out.
Rooster sank into her chair, the leather sighing. She picked up her whiskey glass, took a slow sip, and studied them over the rim
Rooster set the glass down with a soft click. “Emily,” she said, her voice losing its courtroom edge, slipping into something resembling weary mentorship. “Walk it off. Take the back trail. Cool your head.” She shifted her flinty gaze to Amy. “Your hindquarters will be coloring up nicely by morning. Savory that, next time you think about dawdling when the dinner bell rings.”
Amy’s cheeks burned hotter than her backside. She couldn’t form words, only managed a stiff nod that sent a fresh wave of nausea through her. Her thighs trembled as she took a half-step back from the desk. Rooster looked away, already pulling a ledger toward her, the conversation clearly finished.
The warped door groaned open under Emily’s shaky hand, and Amy stumbled into the heavy twilight. The ranch yard’s packed dirt felt unsteady beneath her boots. She focused on breathing, on the distant scent of hay and horse, anything but the deep, radiating pain that made every step a fresh ordeal. Emily closed the door softly, then leaned against the rough wooden wall of the office, her face tilted up to the darkening sky.
“First time with the board, huh?” Emily said after a long moment. Her voice was raw from crying but held a thread of wry sympathy.
Amy just nodded, hugging her arms around herself.
“Yeah,” Emily exhaled, pushing off the wall. She winced as she took a step. “It’s a different animal. Dusty’s hands are one thing. That oak is… democracy. It treats everyone exactly the same.” She fell into step beside Amy, their slow, careful gait syncing up. “The back trail’s longer, but it’s softer ground. Better right now.”
They walked in silence past the dark, quiet barns. When they reached the fringe of the pasture, away from the lights of the main house, Emily stopped. “Here,” she said, her tone practical. She pulled a small, red tin from her back pocket. “Tiger Balm. It’ll light you up twice as bad before it helps, but the help is worth it.”
Amy stared at the tin, then at Emily’s tired, kind face in the twilight. Her composure, so fiercely held in front of Rooster, cracked. A single, hot tear tracked through the dust on her cheek.
“Hey,” Emily murmured. She didn’t hug her; that would have been agony. Instead, she gently bumped her shoulder against Amy’s. A solid, comforting pressure. “You took it. You didn’t fold. Rooster sees that. It counts for something out here.”
Amy swallowed a sob, accepting the tin. Its metal was warm from Emily’s body. “It hurts so much,” she whispered, the admission sounding childish to her own ears.
“I know,” Emily said, simply. “It’s supposed to. But you’re not alone in it. Remember that.” She looked back toward the office, a single yellow square in the vast dark. “Come on. Let’s walk. The moving helps, believe it or not.”
The moving helps, believe it or not.”
They walked, a slow and painful procession, along a worn dirt path that skirted the eastern fence line. The last of the sunset was a purple bruise on the horizon, and the first stars prickled overhead. Every footfall sent a jarring ache through Amy, but soon a strange rhythm emerged, the pain settling into a constant, bearable throb alongside the crickets’ song.
“She really likes that old paddle,” Emily said after a while, her voice regaining some of its normal timbre. “Calls it ‘The Accountant’. Says it always makes the numbers square.”
Amy let out a shaky laugh that surprised her. “It felt like it was squaring my bones.”
“Yeah.” Emily pointed ahead to a cluster of live oaks, their gnarled branches creating a dark canopy. “There’s a old trough over there, dried up. Nobody comes out this way after dark. We can use the moonlight.”
They reached the quiet hollow. It was peaceful, the ground soft with fallen leaves. The air was cooler here, smelling of damp earth and old wood. Emily leaned against the rough bark of the largest tree, her face a pale oval in the gloom.
“Okay, city girl,” she said, her tone shifting to something practical, almost nurse-like. “Turn around. Let’s get this balm on before everything seizes up.”
Amy obeyed, her fingers fumbling with her button fly. The denim, abrasive as burlap, whispered down over her inflamed skin. She heard Emily doing the same behind her. The night air was a shock against her battered flesh, a cool contrast to the deep heat radiating from it.
“Alright, hand it over,” Emily said.
Amy passed the small red tin back. She heard the click of the lid, then a sharp, medicinal scent cut through the earthy smells—camphor, menthol, clove. Emily’s breath hissed.
“Brace yourself. This is the second fire.”
Cold, greasy salve touched the center of Amy’s throbbing left cheek. For a heartbeat, there was only the unguent’s chill. Then the heat ignited. It wasn’t the blunt trauma of the paddle; this was a precise, chemical inferno, digging deep into the muscle. Amy gasped, her hands slapping against the rough tree bark for anchor.
“Jesus,” she choked out.
“Told you,” Emily murmured, her fingers working the balm in with a firm, circular pressure that was both agony and relief. “Burns like hell’s porchlight. Then it just… burns like a nice hearth fire.”
Amy clenched her teeth, riding the wave of new sensation. As Emily tended to her, the initial fierce burn mellowed into a deep, penetrating warmth that soothed the bruised tissue underneath. The contrast was dizzying. A groan slipped out, part pain, part profound release.
Emily finished, patting her hip. “Your turn. Try not to put me through the tree.”
Amy took the tin, her fingers slick with the residual balm. She turned. Emily was facing the tree, her own bare skin a landscape of darker shadows in the moonlight, the painful blush of her punishment just visible. Amy scooped out a generous glob.
She worked it into Emily’s skin, mimicking her firm, circular motions. Emily stiffened, then exhaled a long, shuddering breath as the heat took hold. “Good,” she whispered. “That’s real good.”
A reckless, curious thought uncoiled in Amy’s mind, fed by the lingering adrenaline, the intimacy of the dark, and the strange alchemy of pain still humming in her veins. Her experience with Dusty in the tack room felt both miles away and intimately close.
“Emily?” Her voice was small in the vast quiet.
“Hmm?”
“This might sound crazy.” Amy’s heart hammered against her ribs. “But… what about putting some there? You know. Where it… really heats up?”
Emily was silent for a moment. Then a low, knowing chuckle escaped her. “On the starfish? You’re full of surprises, Carter. It’ll light you up proper. Like a Roman candle.”
“I want to feel it,” Amy said, the desire shocking in its clarity.
“Your funeral.” Emily’s voice held no judgment, only a faint amusement. “Go on, then. But go easy. It’s potent stuff.”
Amy’s pulse thrummed in her ears. She turned back to the tree, the rough bark against her forehead. She dipped her thumb deep into the tin, coating it in the fiery gel. With her other hand, she reached behind herself, exploring the tender swell of her own cheeks.
She found the tight, secret pucker between them. She took a breath, held it, and pressed her thumb firmly against it, smearing the balm in a slow, deliberate circle. The sensation was immediate and electrifying. A sharp, piercing heat flared, intense and different from the muscular ache on her cheeks. It was a bright, singular point of almost unbearable sensation.
A whimper escaped her lips. The heat was terrifying, incredible. Driven by a instinct she didn’t fully understand, she slid two fingers of her clean hand into her vagina, feeling her own wetness, slick and hot. The dual sensations—the searing punctuation behind, the slippery fullness within—created a feedback loop of raw feeling.
She pushed her thumb, slick with the now-burning balm, past the tight ring of muscle.
It was like swallowing a lit match.
The world contracted to that white-hot point. She cried out, her body arching away from the tree. The pain was pure and catalytic, morphing instantly into a tidal wave of something else. It stripped every thought, every pretense, leaving only scorching sensation. Her fingers worked inside her, frantic and perfect, as the internal firestorm built.
It crested with a violence that stole her vision.
A guttural sob ripped from her throat. Her knees buckled, but she held herself up against the tree. A hot, rhythmic gush spilled out of her, soaking her inner thighs, distinct from anything she’d ever felt before. It was a release so total it felt cellular, draining the last of her strength. She slumped forward, her cheek against the cool bark, panting, trembling, utterly spent.
The fierce heat in her backside was now a distant thrum. Her whole body felt liquefied, humming.
She heard a soft rustle of leaves. Emily’s hand, warm and steadying, came to rest on the small of her back, right above the cooling, damp mess.
“Well,” Emily said softly, her voice carrying a smile. “Guess you found out.”
Amy could only nod, a shaky, breathless sound that was almost a laugh. The crickets seemed louder now, the moon brighter. She had never felt so simultaneously shattered and completely, terrifyingly alive.