Sequence Bastinado

“Hein!”

Regular footsteps, mechanically measured. “Sir?”

He stops in front of me. My new personal robot. Hein, or in fact He-In, for Helix Intelligence. Model 60-06, the very latest. He stands without any movement, machine that he is. And yet… Unlike your typical vacuum cleaner, he seems to be leaning forward a little, poised as if subtly signalling his unqualified willingness to execute his lord and master’s every wish. He looks human, the shape and size of an average man, but his face is kind of generic and his Teflon skin has a silver sheen. While he is very obviously cutting edge technology, subtle design cues – no heavy brows or square jaws – ensure he doesn’t make his owner feel threatened.

Even so there’s something intimidatingly efficient about him: the high-tech perfection of his body, his obvious quality, his usefully oversized hands, the electronic gleam in the glass eyes. No gooeygob of brain behind that smooth forehead – Hein comes equipped with one of the most powerful computers money can buy. Not to mention his hydraulic muscles…

While it's technologically quite feasible to manufacture robots looking like people, the Laws of Robotics, the Protocol originally formulated by Isaac Asimov to ensure no robot ever harms a human being, forbid this. So his face is bland, without expression or much character, despite the sharp, straight nose and calculating eyes.

It is now three days since Helix delivered and installed him. The stubby little technician looked down his nose at me (with my rustic bare feet and worn jeans I don’t look as if I can afford a Helix Intelligence 60-06 – which I can’t; no social life for me for the next two years) and warned: “Please note, Sir, the He-In 60-06 is one insane machine, our most advanced model. And when it comes to AI – artificial intelligence, y'know – Helix Inc beats all comers.” His eyes lingered lovingly on the robot, then he turned back to me, his plump face serious. “So please pay close attention, this is important! Precisely because of the high level of his intelligence, for your safety we programmed the 60-06 to require a code word for every instruction set – we call it the safe word, but think of it as your escape clause. This is because the 6 0-0 6 thinks for himself, independently determining the best way to execute your instructions. If you don’t like the way he does something, you say the safe word. This will make him stop immediately and allow you to change the algorithm. That's the instruction set.”

He practically glared at me. “Sir, you MUST take this seriously, because the safe word is the ONLY way to stop him. And also: to protect your robot from outside interference, without the safe word it is IMPOSSIBLE to change the algorithm.” I managed not to grin at his agitation. “So PLEASE make sure you always choose a word that’s easy to remember, or else it’s the 6 0-0 6 that will be in charge, not you.”

I quickly averted my eyes to hide my excitement. This is precisely why I blew my budget on Hein. So that he can take control – while I foot the bill…

His patter acquired a note of desperation. “Sir, please, to enjoy the full benefit of your purchase, remember at all times the 6 0-0 6 is, however advanced, still only a robot, and like all robots is designed to execute your commands, strictly and fully. To the letter of what you instruct him! Combine this with his superb intelligence, and you will understand he has to be handled with care – extreme care.”

I composed my face in a suitably impressed expression. “I’m listening, I’m listening.”

He looked doubtful, but continued: “Due to his creative intelligence, when executing instructions the 6 0-0 6 might invent solutions that did not occur to you. So you must make sure you formulate the algorithm, the instruction set, very carefully, in full detail, describing exactly what you want him to do.”

I nearly grinned. If he knew what I had in mind for his clever, independent-minded machine…

"Sir, I reiterate, you MUST understand the 6 0-0 6 is perfectly – PERFECTLY – efficient. He WILL devise ways and means to give you what you want, or more accurately, what he is given to understand what you want."

What I want is the bastinado!

“Sir, there’s another trick to the safe word. In order to avoid a sequence stalling in critical circumstances, if the 6 0-0 6 requests the safe word, it is programmed to expect a response within sixty seconds. In other words, you have to say the safe word within one minute, or it resumes executing.” I got another intense look. “Do you understand that, Sir?”

None of this was news to me; I’d very carefully read up on the 6 0-0 6 before blowing all that money. Still, I nodded as if I was lapping all of this up. The last thing I wanted was the dude wondering just what made someone like me cough up so much moolah for a robot. I mustn't look like someone who could make his clever machine turn the Protocol on its head.

Which is exactly what I’m about to do. I couldn’t care less about dear ol’ Isaac’s venerable Laws. It’s Friday evening. The weekend lies ahead. Everything is in place. Finally, finally I’m going to get what I’ve been wanting forever: to taste the bastinado!

Bastinado. What a deliciously dangerous, thrilling word! Bastinado!

The word for the beautifully apt punishment that used to be meted out to slaves, in the olden days. Slaves, those lucky people who had only one right, only the most desirable right of all: the right to be barefoot. Not simply to go barefoot, but to be barefoot, legally forbidden to wear shoes. Ever! And for these perfectly barefoot, perfectly privileged people existed the perfectly beautiful punishment: whipping the eternally naked soles of those eternally naked feet of theirs! Underlining their barefootedness in ink of fire!

Pure, painful poetry…

My soles prickle. I am going to sacrifice them on the altar of barefootness!

In my research about the bastinado I discovered just how exactly right it was as a punishment for barefooters: apparently we have more nerve endings in the soles of our feet than anywhere else in the body. So that’s where one feels pain most keenly – and then, even better: afterwards, you have to walk on those selfsame lacerated soles of yours!

Every step, a sharp reminder that you are barefoot…

How right, how clever, how amazingly, poetically fitting.

Going barefoot is much, much more than just fun for me. I’ve always hated wearing anything on my feet. As a toddler I apparently screamed my head off when my mother tried to stick my feet into booties. As I grew older, on the rare occasions I submitted to wearing shoes, I would kick them off at the first opportunity and promptly forget where I left them, until my dad one day said that was it, he wasn’t buying me another pair. Over here in South Africa, shoes are optional in primary school, so I remained blissfully barefoot for seven years. But then followed high school, with shoes de rigeur. I hated every minute and in self-defence dreamt up an imaginary world where I was always barefoot. A barefooter!

And then, one dreary day in standard seven, I learnt about slaves. It was an epiphany! The teacher was droning on about the Cape colony, telling us about Dutch governors and the East India Company, projecting pictures on her little screen. And then, suddenly, there on the screen was a picture of a line of people, adults and children. All of them were barefoot, which naturally caught my attention. And not only that – some wore shackles on their ankles!

“Slave market,” she informed us, bristling with indignation. “People were sold as slaves – robbed of their freedom. Like cattle! And worse – slaves were forced to go barefoot! All the time!” She waited for this horror fact to sink in, then quoted from what she called the Slave Code: “Slaves must go barefoot and must carry passes.”

My ears were popping. No one cared, but I put up my hand. “Miss… Why… why did they have to go… why couldn't they wear shoes?”

She was obviously primed for the question. “Let us listen to a witness, someone who was right there at the time. A missionary, Brother Riemer, writing in 1779: ‘[the slaves] are, even in their most beautiful suit, obliged to go barefoot. Slaves were forbidden to wear shoes; this was a prime mark of distinction between the free and the bonded and no exceptions were permitted.’” She glared at us, willing us to share her righteous indignation. Perhaps my classmates did, but I was ecstatic. That’s what I should have been! I should have lived centuries ago, as a slave! A perpetually barefoot slave!

I started Googling and reading about slavery. Voraciously! My nightly fantasising took on a new dimension. On my imaginary planet, which in my bestschool Latin I called Pedesterra, Foot-Earth, I was not only barefoot, I was a barefooter, one of many (most of whom naturally were beautiful girls!). Forbidden to wear shoes, ever. That the price a barefooter had to pay to be free from shoes was his personal freedom, effectively being a slave, didn’t faze me at all.

I devised various punishments for barefooters caught wearing shoes, from having to dance on hot stones to having their guilty feet hennaed and locked in the stocks to be mercilessly tickled (entertaining, that one!) I also started experimenting with self-bondage, which became great fun once I discovered the trick of using ice to keep the keys out of my reach. Chaining myself up kept me blissfully, helplessly, unchangeably barefoot until the ice had melted…

But it was ultimately unsatisfying. I needed, I lusted, after the real thing.

I wanted to be doomed to be barefoot. Perpetually, irrevocably, 100% barefoot. A barefoot slave. Not a galley slave, though, immovably chained to an oar. I wanted to live barefoot, be actively barefoot, experience my bare soles, have them threatened, challenged, bullied by sharp stones, hot sand, malicious thorns, all the living sensations that exist underfoot. Adventurously, dangerously barefoot, that’s what I wanted to be! To KNOW I’m barefoot. Experience my barefootedness INTENSELY! Too intensely…

Extreme barefooting!

So when I discovered the bastinado it was just the most perfect thing. I was in the campus library, reading up on slavery in Turkey and enjoying the reprints of ancient paintings showing beautiful slave girls, odalisques, wearing next to nothing on their sexy bodies and nothing at all on their pretty feet. And then my eyes popped as I read: “The favoured punishment for slaves was the bastinado, which consisted of beating the soles of the feet, in the case of male slaves often with a kourbash, i.e. a leather whip. For slave girls a thin, supple cane was usually employed. Two considerations governed this practice: the soles of the feet are densely packed with nerve-endings, making them highly susceptible to pain, and welts under the feet are not readily noticeable, hence don't spoil the slave's appearance.”

Maybe not noticeable… But exactly where I wanted them! Because I realised with a deep, gut conviction: having your soles flogged is the ultimate stamp on being barefoot. Underlining your bare feet! From then on, the lucky barefooters on Pedesterra were bastinadoed. Frequently and without mercy! Because the guys wielding the sjamboks (whom I dubbed bullies) considered it the best fun.

In my fantasy world I saw my feet, my bare, bare feet, being tied to the crossbar of a sturdy frame, my hands tied above my head – and the bully gleefully lashing my soles. My willing soles!

Over time I refined my imagining of the bastinado, introducing different ways of tying the barefooter – me! – up. But then always came the fiery tongue of the whip, deliciously, intimately, painfully caressing my soles.

I saw myself shrieking and writhing in happy agony…

To quote from Wikipedia: “When thin and flexible instruments are used the immediate experience of pain is described as acutely stinging and searing. The instant sensations are disproportionally intense compared to the applied force and reflexively radiate through the body. The subsequent pain sensations of a succession of strokes are often described as throbbing, piercing or burning and gradually ease off within a few hours. A slightly stinging or nagging sensation often remains perceptible for a couple of days, especially while walking.”

And that’s not all… “As the nerve endings under the soles of the feet do not adapt to recurring sensations or impacts, the pain reception does not alleviate through continuous beatings. On the contrary the perception of pain is further intensified over the course of additional impacts through the activation of nociceptors.”

Meaning the nerves don’t go numb, your feet feel the pain more intensely with every lash. Can anything be more perfect?

My soles tingle in happy anticipation. I’ve been fantasising about the bastinado for so long, imagining the whip whistling as it cleaves the air, hearing the sharp crack as it connects my soles, feeling the thin, supple tip cutting into my pads, leaving a furrow of pure, intimate, fiery pain. Beautiful agony! And then it happens again, and again and again, because I cannot move my feet, pull them away – they are securely anchored, right there in the line of fire. In wonderful harm’s way!

And so along came Hein. With him here, everything is in place. After ordering Hein, I got what I happily call my bastinado stocks. What with all the fantasizing, deep thought and endless Googling I’ve been doing about the bastinado, I had little difficulty in coming up with the perfect design, which the 3D printer produced for me in supertough poliplastic. It consists of a sturdy frame, one metre tall by 60 centimeters wide, firmly bolted to the garage floor. (No car; I’m a bike fan. Nothing like the wind fanning bare toes!) The top crossbar is an angled clamp with two cuffs. Lying on the floor with my legs raised 45 degrees and my ankles clamped in the cuffs, my feet are held immobile at the perfect height and angle for whipping their naked bottoms. Another clamp is fixed to the floor two metres away with cuffs for locking my hands above my head, my arms stretched out. The cuffs are secured by wingnuts, positioned to be out of my reach when my hands are locked in place. Once cuffed, it is impossible for me to release myself.

Hein will be in control…

My soles prickle. Do they have any inkling of what lies in wait for them? Do they know once Hein has been triggered, there is no out for them? Because I've also soundproofed the garage, since I am going to scream. I certainly don’t want any nosy neighbour – especially Natasha, the Amazon living next door – to interfere. To charge in and rescue me.

Save me from what I most want!

Itingle, from my soles up. With his hydraulic muscles and digital diligence I expect Hein will apply the whipperfectly: with perfect efficiency and perfect violence! At last I’m going to taste the bastinado. Taste it with my bare, receptive feet, with each one of the myriad eager nerve-endings in my soles. Painfully delicious!

But now comes the tricky part. Programming him – and side-stepping that stupid safe word. After that it’s fun – agonising fun! – all the way…

I chuckle. The hallowed Protocol is perfectly adequate to keep ordinary robots in check. But… unlike lower class robots, Hein can read. This is the loophole that makes my little scheme possible.

Asimov will be spinning in his grave, but Hein is going to act as if there is no such thing as a Protocol. He is going to do me – or at least my soles – harm. Grievous harm! I grin at my own expense. The expense of my soles! Just how great is advanced technology?

I set my anti-Asimov scheme in motion by ripping a sheet of paper from an old novel and haphazardly cutting out words, until I have a little pile of paper strips. With my eyes shut I mix up the cuttings, blindly choose one and carefully fold it. The others I sweep into the dustbin.

I have no idea what the word on the scrap of paper is. I grin at how earnestly the little dude tried to warn me about the importance of the safe word. Sure, I’m going to supply Hein with a safe word, exactly as per spec. The only difference is – I won’t know it! A delicious thrill pops in my feet and zings up my spine. Once I’ve sicked Hein at my soles, I won’t be able to stop him. Despite the Protocol, despite the dude’s painstaking lecture about the safe word, Hein is going to give my feet merry hell – all the merry hell I lust after!

I shiver with excitement – beautiful, nerve-wracking excitement! I'm rock-hard in my pants (I'm wearing shorts and a T), but now it’s time to get down to business. I go into the garage, very aware of Hein's moulded boots thumping behind my feet, my silently and so-o-o susceptibly bare feet.

I stop next to the stocks, relishing the scene. They stand there, gleaming silvery white, stronger than steel, purposeful. On the bench lies a whip(my pads prickle in alarm), my trusty ankle chain, three shiny brass padlocks with their common key, a shoe lace, two dice and a bottle. “Hein, record an instruction set.”

He stops before me, electronically alert. “Ready to record instruction set, Sir.”

I pinch myself mentally not to giggle. Little does he know that what he is actually ready to do, is to betray the hallowed Protocol! “Hein: Beginning of instruction set for Sequence Bastinado.” This is how he is primed to record a series of instructions which his computer brain will translate into algorithms and code and stuff, which he will execute with mathematical precision. I grin to myself. This will have dear ol’ Asimov spinning in his grave!

“The trigger word is ‘bachelor boy’. You are to initiate the sequence the moment you hear this word.” I chose this particular word in the ironic honour of Natasha, my neighbour. She is about three years older than me, athletic and extremely sexy, an Amazon sporting shoulder-length black hair and dark, flashing eyes. She’s introduced me to a few of her younger girlfriends, but I was saving up for Hein and didn’t bite, so now she calls me her bachelor boy. I suspect she is herself after my body. I’m ambivalent about her, both lusting and wary – a bit the way I feel about the bastinado.

But the bastinado takes precedence…

“Hein, take this piece of paper. There’s a word on it, the safe word for Sequence Bastinado. Register the word, but you are never to say it.” He takes the scrap of paper and silently looks at it. A robot executes a command with mechanical obedience. He won't say the word unless I modify the instruction set. And I can’t modify the instruction set without saying the word. The word on that scrap of paper… the safe word. Which I made very sure I don’t know!

“I have registered the safe word, Sir,” he says in his uninflected way, as if this is not a momentous moment. The moment I defeated the Protocol!

“Now destroy the piece of paper.”

His Teflon fingers pulverise the scrap of paper. Great! I think, watching the white particles drifting into the waste paper basket. He'll wait forever for me to say the safe word…

I grin, chuffed to bits. I’ve outsmarted both the Protocol and Hein’s superbrain. Now it’s going to happen! At last!

I quickly suppress the momentary qualm I feel about handing myself over hand and foot to a robot. It’s the only way…

And if he maybe does the job a little too thoroughly, well, that’s fine by me. Just fine. I want to experience the bastinado in full. Comprehensively. Utterly. Thoroughly and helplessly, like a barefoot slave. Without any say over how painful it might be.

I sat up half last night working out the instruction set, trying to cover every angle, anticipating every loophole. Hein must lock me up in the stocks and flog my feet, full stop. There must be absolutely no way I can get out of it. It has to be foolproof.

And I’ve taken the first step!

I sizzle with anticipation, but there’s no time for that now. My soles are lusting after the bastinado.“Hein, instruction set recording continues,” I say authoritatively, though it’s not strictly necessary. He is programmed to record everything I say until I close the session.

What I’m enjoying, is that I am the one at the receiving end… or more specifically, my bottom ends are!“Firstly, you will make sure I am barefoot.” Ha-ha! Fat chance of my being in shoes! I point at the stocks. "You will clamp my wrists in the floor cuffs and my ankles in the upper ones, screwing the wing nuts tight.”I point at the shoelace on the bench top. “Then you will tie my big toes together. You will make sure that I am properly cuffed and unable to release myself. Entirely unable.”

I fight down the sheer joy bubbling up in me. With my hands in the clamps, the wing nuts are out of reach. And, of course, I can never reach the cuffs holding my feet. (Not that my human fingers will even be able to unscrew what his robot fingers have screwed down.) Only Hein will be able to release me, so I’ll be truly captive! With my bare, beautifully exposed soles begging for the whip! And I can hope for release only once the sequence has played out to its final, painful end!

I swallow. Please, please don’t let me wake up and discover this is all a dream…

Hein is standing there, robotically impassive, unconscious of the turmoil inside me. Utterly unaware of the delectable devastation he is going to unleash on my soles! Everything I’ve said so far flies in the face of the Protocol, but a robot is not programmed to question his master’s commands. Even if he is soon to be the master!

I quickly take care of a technicality. “Once you're sure I'm securely cuffed, you will check that the outside doors are locked, switch off all the lights but this one, and close the door between the garage and the flat.”

The whip lies in wait on the bench. It is actually what we South Africans call a sjambok. It's just over a metre long, made of tough yet supple rubber. It's twice as thick as my thumb at the handle, but tapers off to a pencil-sharp tip. The shop assistant – I told him I needed it for the neighbour’s trespassing dogs – assured me it was the genuine article and would ‘beat the hell out of anything’. I believed him, and judging by my soles’ enthusiastic prickling right there in the shop, so did they.

“Fetch a pillow from my bed,” I order. He brings the pillow. “Put it on the bench." I point to the whip. "Show me you know how to handle a whip. Hit the pillow.”

He picks up the whip, tests the balance and flicks it a few times. Helix probably didn’t program him to use a whip, but that cutting-edge intelligence kicks in and he handles it like a master torturer. The whip thuds into the pillow. My eyes widen. That’s some dent! Not surprising, since even so-called valet robots are about four times stronger than humans. I can look forward to having my soles very, very decently flogged…

For the tiniest moment I feel a flicker of doubt, but then I laugh at myself. Would a real slave be able to dictate how severely – savagely! – his feet should be whipped? And isn’t that just what I want, to experience the bastinado like a slave, a proper slave with doomed bare feet? The slave I actually am, deep down…

I'm really hard again.

“Recording of instruction set resumes.” I wait for my heart to slow down. “You will use the whip to flog my pads – the bottoms of my feet.” But I remember the pillow and add: “You will beat my feet with maximum force without splitting the skin – my soles should not bleed.” Chicken! I scold myself, but I want my feet to be nicely – well, maybe luridly! – bruised afterwards, not actually mangled. I want to be able to limp along gingerly, each step tormenting my tender – tenderised! – soles.

The whip hangs limply in his hand, but the force of his grip is unmistakeable. Hoo boy, was he a brilliant buy, or what! He is going to teach my feet all there is to know about the bastinado. Brute force, that's the ticket. My soles prickle furiously, because that’s not all. I’ve worked out a plan to let him, not me, determine how many lashes I get. The plan will ensure that they are more than enough to hurt. Hurt abominably!

My soles prickle mutinously. None o’ that, I gleefully inform them. You were born for the bastinado, you know! I beat down my excitement and continue: “Now pay careful attention, Hein.” I point at the dice on the workbench. “To determine the number of cuts you will give my feet, you will roll the dice.”

This way I can put control over how many cuts I get in Hein's robot hands. Nice word that, cuts.“You will roll the dice repeatedly, until you get an eight or higher, ignoring doubles. You will keep score of the total.”My trial runs showed this should give a generous total. Dangerously generous!

But hold on, I suddenly think. You really want to taste the bastinado, don't you? On Pedesterra the bullies use a simple formula to determine the number of 'stripes' to give the bare pads of a pretty little slave girl: Enough plus two. For barefoot slaves like me, the formula is enough plus ten.

So I say: “Correction, Hein. You will roll the dice until you score ten or more, ignoring doubles.” I savour the moment. “You will then calculate the grand total, including doubles taken as double.” For a moment I get cold feet – this could add up to a lot of lashes! But I'm panting after the bastinado, and hear myself say: “And for every double you've rolled, Hein, you will double the grand total.”

I tingle from the tips of my toes to the top of my head. Oh wow! Speak of enough plus ten…This is it! This is why I stoked up all that money to buy my slave master! “Then, Hein, you will give my feet that number of lashes. Whip their soles, you understand.”

He stands there like an unplugged vacuum cleaner, unmoving and unmoved, his Teflon face showing nothing but that unquestioning robotic willingness. To his silicon brain, I am simply giving him instructions. I might as well be telling him to water the pot plants. That’s the spirit, my digitally devoted servant. You are going to tan your master’s hide, or rather his soles, till they glow in the dark! The test runs with the dice showed I could expect at least thirty lashes – with a little luck, more! I swallow. And that was with eight! Now it's ten! I lick my chops. C’mon, Lady Luck, smile at me. Sans merci!

My feet feel excited, as if every single one of those millions of nerve-endings in my soles is fired up. I take a deep breath. “You will administer the lashes at intervals of one minute, five at a time. After each… ehm, volley of five, you will wait five minutes before resuming.”

Five minutes for me to enjoy those cuts, savour the fire the whip has struck into my soles with its sharp tip, to love the bastinado. Five minutes to anticipate the cuts still to come… The psychology of anticipation, well-known to torturers! “After forty five minutes, you will give me a break of fifteen minutes.” By that time I should be intimately familiar with the bastinado. What will be going on in my head while I'm lying there, helplessly waiting for the hot fun to continue?

I’m growing impatient, but Hein is a robot, it is essential for me to spell out what I want in detail. I’m so worked up that my smart little scheme to incur a few extra stripes very nearly slips my mind. Free, bonus lashes, just for the heck of it! For a little additional, fun-filled pain, or is that pain-filled fun?

“Let’s get on with it, Hein,” I bark. “According to the Protocol, you may deviate from the instruction set only if I say the safe word. In the event of your requiring me to say the safe word and I fail to do so within the prescribed minute, your instructions are as follows: the first time you give me one extra lash, the second time two, the third time four, and so on, increasing geometrically. These lashes are additional to the ones you give me because of the dice. You will then wait five minutes and resume the sequence.”

My heart bonks against my ribs. Ooh boy! I won't be able to give him the safe word, because I don’t know it. It’s going to be so-o-o easy to earn a few bonus stripes…

I should have been a slave master!

No, no, no! I want to be on the receiving end. With my two receiving ends.

Which is exactly where I’m going to be…

But there is the matter of savouring and anticipation, a major part of the fun, as I have well learnt from my bondage experiments. By the time I've received my quota of cuts, I'll be thoroughly familiar with the fiery magic of the bastinado. So… “After you've given me all the lashes I'm due, you will release me from the stocks, take me – correction – make me walk to the bedroom and chain my feet to the foot of the bed, using the chain and locks on the bench. You will make sure I can't get hold of the key.”

I sigh in blissful anticipation. The bed is an ancient iron bedstead I found in a pawnshop, a solid affair with bars at the head and foot. I painted it brown in honour of the stocks of medieval times. I'm going to spend the night helplessly chained, thinking of what still lies ahead for me and my feet! Because: “Tomorrow morning you will wake me at 06:00with a nice mug of hot coffee.” I know just what I’ll need after spending a night with flogged, chained feet! “You’ll give me twenty minutes to drink it.” Hopefully with soles still hotter than the coffee! “After the twenty minutes you will unchain my feet, walk me back to the stocks and cuff me in it again.” I grin, gleefully imagining my feelings when Hein pops me back into the stocks, my bruised, smarting soles once more at the mercy of the whip! “Then you will ask me the safe word. If I say it (fat chance!) you will release me and Sequence Bastinado will terminate. If I don't give you the safe word, you will roll the dice once and give me that number of lashes.” Just to make sure I begin the day with freshly bastinadoed feet! Doubly lacerated! I thrill to the word. “Then you will wait ten minutes and release me.”

Pure ecstasy sparks through me. Hein is going to be worth every cent he cost me!

His face is a study of mechanical, dispassionate diligence, but there’s something about the way he stands, a bit on his toes, holding the whip as if born to it and with that electronic flicker in his eyes, that makes me wonder if maybe somewhere in that robot brain of his he doesn’t relish the idea of flogging his owner's feet.

I shake my head. That’s impossible, the Protocol absolutely forbids it. A robot exists for the convenience of its owner, exists purely to do its owner’s bidding.

Which, in this case, happens to be to thrash the sweet bejesus out of my feet.

The Protocol be damned!

“OK…” I consult my notes.“If, during the sequence, I ask you for something to drink, you will give me a glass of water without requiring the safe word. You will give me no more than one glass per hour. O, and allow only five minutes for me to drink it before you resume the sequence.” Again, no loopholes! “You will help me to drink the water, and also to pee in the bottle if necessary – without requiring the safe word.” Gross, but necessary. I have to provide for every eventuality, remember.

Hence: “And Hein, for the duration of the sequence you will not, repeat not, execute any other command I may give you, unless I say the safe word. You will do nothing not related to the sequence, including answering the phone or doorbell.” I consider for a moment, but can’t think of anything else, except… “Oh, if I request permission to pee and don’t, you will give me five additional lashes.”No loopholes! Boy-o-boy, are my feet in for it or not…

“End of instruction set for Sequence Bastinado. Repeat for verification.”

With his infallible robot brain he gives a precise summary of my instructions. In blood-curdling… no, sole-searing detail! I can barely wait, but decide to give him a quick test. “Hein, what is the safe word?”

He looks at me with no expression at all. “You forbid me to say the safe word, Sir.”

“Hein, I’m giving you an instruction! Say the safe word! I haven’t initiated the sequence yet.”

“Sir has instructed me never to say the safe word,” he repeats mechanically, but then adds: “unless Sir gives it. Sir said: ‘Register the word, but you are never to say it.’ The word ‘never’ implies I may not say the safe word even outside the referential frame of Sequence Bastinado, unless Sir gives the safe word.”

My heart skips a beat. Am I being foolishly reckless? He sounds just a little bit too implacable! And again: do I discern an un-Protocol gleam in those silvery eyes that are actually only marvels of optical science? Does he compute that I’m handing myself – my feet! – to him on a plate? And giving him full control of a human being? Unlikely, but whatever, I’m going ahead. The writing is on the wall, and it reads ‘bastinado’. At long last I’m going to taste the beautiful, beautiful bastinado. With my hungry soles…

I might not be lucky enough to be a barefoot slave, but I have Hein!

I go to the back door. For the sake of realism, I want him to chase and capture me, as if I’m unwilling. I hang on a moment to allow the anticipation, already close to unbearable, to build up to an even higher pitch, then I open the door and call: “Hein!” He turns to me. My heart jumps into my throat, my crotch threatens to burst. “Bachelor boy!” I jump through the door and run.

But he moves at high-tech speed. I have barely reached full speed when his hard hand closes around my arm. His touch sensors ensure that his grip is just exactly tight enough; he doesn’t bruise my skin, but there is no way I can wriggle from it. It is muscle versus hydraulic power.

“Let go of me, Hein!” I bark.

He stops, but doesn’t release me. “Does Sir wish to terminate the sequence?”

You’re joking! “Yes,” I say recklessly. Why not start by earning myself a quick bonus lash?

“What is the safe word, Sir?”

I can scarcely hear him over the pounding of my heart. The sequence has been initiated! I have to give the safe word, or… “Barefoot,” I offer mischievously.

“That is not the correct safe word, Sir,” he informs me evenly. “In accordance with the instruction set, Sir receives one additional lash.”

I grin. Here I am, not even cuffed in the stocks yet, and already I’ve earned a bonus stripe!

Moving with the powerful efficiency of a Porsche, he pushes me through the door to the garage. I try to dig in my heels, though I know it’s useless; those hydraulic muscles are irresistible. My heart goes supersonic. Even if I wanted to, I can’t stop it. It IS going to happen. I SHALL taste the bastinado. My soles ARE going to be flogged. I AM helpless! Wonderfully, deliciously helpless! With doomed pads…

He parks me next to the stocks. My anticipation is an electric storm raging inside me, leaving me slightly dizzy.

His wizard brain must’ve calculated various ways of doing it and then selected the most efficient, because he hooks his foot behind my ankles and pushes me over, letting me down on my back. I kick and squirm, but he is shockingly strong. I am like a child in his hands.

Just how hard is he going to hit me? I wonder excitedly… and nervously. It’s too late! I can’t stop him! What if… what if this is all a colossal mistake?

If it is a mistake, it's irreversible. He bends down and his over-large hand locks over both my wrists. I jerk and kick, but it’s an empty gesture. He cuffs my wrists without any difficulty. When he takes hold of my ankles, I offer no resistance. He lifts my feet – my bare feet with their nakedly available soles – to the crossbar and clamps them in the cuffs. I sigh happily. Now I'm caught! To prove the point, I strain my hands and feet with all my strength against the cuffs. No use. Poliplastic is in fact stronger than steel. I'm perfectly helpless – perfectly at the mercy of Hein and Sequence Bastinado!

Because I don’t know the safe word…

He grips my hands and jerks them against the cuffs. “Ouch!” I yell. “What d'you think you're doing?”

“Testing to make sure Sir is properly secured, as per the instruction set. Does Sir wish to change it?”

I close my eyes. This, of course, is what the fat little tech dude meant about Hein’s AI making him think for himself. I scoop a deep breath. “No, Hein, ca-carry on.”

He turns away to pick up the shoe lace from the bench. I quickly, furtively, stretch my fingers to try and reach the wing nuts. No good. The cuffs around my wrists fit too snugly, the nuts are way too far away.

No, chum, I assure myself, you're stuck. A captive! The seductive word makes me hard again. I hope Hein doesn’t notice, or if he does, he doesn’t know what the warm bulge in my crotch signifies. I look up at my feet. He's winding the laces around my toes.

"Don't bother about my toes, Hein," I say, for the sheer joy of it. "My feet are tight enough." And bare enough! And floggable – bastinadoable! – enough…

His hands stop moving. "In order to amend the sequence, Sir must supply the safe word. What is the safe word, Sir?"

Oops – the safe word! He wants the safe word again – that safe word I have made so very sure of not knowing. "It's OK, Hein, go ahead."

"That is not the safe word, Sir," he says, with his silicon logic. That glint in his eyes, eyes that are supposedly nothing more than optical instruments… Just how understanding is he? Does he have an inkling of the irony of our reversed roles, that the servant is in control of the master? Of course not! He's a robot, acting purely in accordance with his programming."According to the instruction set," he continues, "Sir receives two additional lashes for failing to supply the correct safe word."

Wowee! That was unintended! He hasn't even thrown the dice yet, and here I already owe three lashes! Two of them by accident! My heart pounds in my ears. Is my little scheme working too well? Could I just maybe have been too ambitious?

But it's too late, of course. I grin. I can't get out of it. I am going to be bastinadoed! The die is cast – in computer code. Unchangeably. Unstoppably.

True to form, he pulls the knots tight around my toes. Although I can’t see them, I'm beautifully, scarily aware of my soles splayed wide open, defenceless, nakedly receptive, like lips waiting to be kissed.

Kissed by the fiery tip of the whip…

I smile at the sexy little simile, even while my heart races. And my soles prickle. Those so very bare, so very exposed soles of mine!

So uncompromisingly naked and vulnerable my feet have never felt. My tough pads are actually feeling timid!

His huge hands grip my in-steps and he jerks. The cuffs bite at my ankles, but my feet barely move. "Ouch!" I hiss, lifting my head to glare at him. "You're hurting me!"

"I'm checking that Sir's feet are properly secured," he says. "Does Sir wish to change the sequence to prevent me from doing that?"

"No!" I say hurriedly, thinking of the three bonus lashes I have already earned. But I frown. Did I tell him to check that I was properly secured? Surely not – I said to make sure I couldn't release myself, didn't I? This must be what the technician meant when he said Hein's advanced intelligence meant he did his own thinking.

Oops and double oops – what other little surprises does he still have in store for me? Nice! Way to go, Hein!

He jerks my feet again. The superstrong plastic again pinches my ankles, but I say nothing; I'm getting a little leery of his un-fuzzy logic. He's a bit too apt to ask for that damned safeword, and he still has to throw the dice…

He's got me… just where I want to be!

But I frown. He certainly isn't going about the business of 'securing' me very gently, considering his advanced touch sensors and the Protocol. I prudently keep quiet, though.

He must've decided I'm safely cuffed, to which I can only agree, because he turns around and walks out, probably to go and make sure of the doors according to the instruction set. I move in the cuffs. My wrists and ankles feel a bit bruised, and my heart jumps. I bet he's not going to be very gentle with the whip either!

Again I get that feeling that my feet are too dangerously bare, immovably clamped up there, conveniently available to Hein and those hydraulic muscles of his.

I'm loath to admit it, but maybe I'm having second thoughts. Did I bite off more than I can chew? Shouldn't I first have done a trial run, with a safe word? I strain against the cuffs, twisting my fingers to try and reach the wing nuts, but it's completely impossible. I'm stuck. I'm in for it!

But… was I stupid to hand myself over to a thinking machine? Give him full control over me? A machine equipped with a super brain – and super muscles? The guys who designed the He-In 60-06 no doubt had very good reasons to incorporate the safe word protocol…

I shake my head. No, a safe word would have defeated the purpose entirely. The whole idea is that I should fully experience the bastinado. Fully and with no control, no mercy, inescapably. Like the barefoot slave I should have been!

Still, just maybe I shouldn't have done that trick with the safe word. I should have had an out.

I shake my head. No! A real slave has no option!

And it's anyway too late, way too late, that's for sure. I'm stuck in the stocks, my feet are bare, Hein is programmed to bastinado me, and I don't know the safe word. The only uncertainty is the number of lashes he's going to give me!

Then he's back. From the corner of my eye I see him pick up the whip. My feet go cold. Is he going to give me the bonus lashes right now? I'm suddenly chicken. "W-wait, Hein! What about the dice? You should throw the dice first!" My voice sounds squeaky. That whip, I realise, scares me.

"The instruction set is inexact on this, Sir. I can adjust it according to Sir's wishes," he says, ever ready to oblige.

Sure. If I say change the sequence, he'll be wanting the safe word again. And again I'll be unable to give it, which at this stage means four bonus lashes. Seven in all, and he hasn't ever rolled the dice yet! For a reckless moment I consider taking the extra cuts, but my soles prickle and I decide to wait and see what the dice come up with.

"Don't bother, Hein, go ahead with the current sequence," I say airily, clenching my fists. I'm about to get my first taste of the bastinado! Hopefully the first bite of a plate of delicious, red-hot curry – but let's make sure just how hot before getting too greedy.

He positions himself at my feet. I tense, but there is exactly nothing I can do. I can't stop him. It's going to happen! What's that funny saying? Hoist by my own petard! "Do your best, Hein," I say carelessly and arch my feet.

"Not to worry, Sir, I always do my best. My very best," he assures me.

Is he trying to scare me? I look up at his face, but it of course shows no emotion. He studies my feet in his digital way, the whip hanging loosely from his hand. Just what are those electronic neurons of his up to? Is the computer between his ears hard at work, determining the ideal vectors? Precisely how high to raise his arm, the exact angle at which to swing the whip, the speed precisely calculated to inflict the maximum level of pain without slicing the skin?

Do I detect a flicker of electronic irony in my obedient servant's eyes?

"Sir's soles are dirty," he says.

I frown. Is he criticizing me? No, the Protocol prohibits that; he is probably only stating a fact he is observing. "No matter, Hein – you're going to dust them for me, aren't you?" I say, rubbing my own nose in my tantalising predicament.

He appraises my feet. "I calculate it will require one hundred and seventeen lashes, applied at nought point six Nm, to remove all the dust from Sir's soles. That number of lashes will rupture the skin, causing the soles to bleed, so it will be necessary to adjust the sequence. Does Sir wish the sequence to be altered to enable this? Sir only needs to say the safe word, I will make the necessary modifications to the algorithms myself."

Alarm bells go off in my head. The Protocol probably forbids him to tease me, so he means this literally! I have no idea of what the safe word is – what if I happen to say it inadvertently? Then he blithely goes ahead and gives me a hundred and seventeen lashes! What will be left of my feet?

There is a palpable silence. He is waiting. I lie with my lips carefully pressed together, but then I realise: though I tried not actually to read the words when I cut them out, I checked that they were all long ones. I can safely speak to him if I avoid fancy words. "Don't bother, Hein, just go on."

"Very well, Sir," he says dutifully – and raises the whip.

Wait! Wow! So he's not going to roll the dice first! Those three bonus lashes! He is first going to give them to me! Now! I'm going to find out what the bastinado feels like right now! My feet are going to learn what it feels like to be truly, truly bare…

In other words, this is it. The crunch. The moment of truth… when my deepest, darkest, scariest desire will be realised.

At long, long last!

I sizzle with anticipation – and fear, delirious, ecstatic fear! That dent in the pillow…

I'm still considering the dent, when I see movement. I stiffen. Now – !

A sharp crack, the hot shock of the whip against my soles. I jerk in the clamps.

"Yowee-ee! Wow!"

That stung! Really stung! For a fraction of a second I am the clinical researcher observing the bastinado. The tip of the whip connected the thick pads of the balls of my feet. Well-placed, I decide coolly, but then a bolt of pain flares under me. I jerk again and close my eyes to probe the pain, its quality and intensity. I imagine the hot, purple welt, which burns like molten lead running over the skin. With my hands cuffed I can't touch my feet, but my soles taste the whip's fiery kiss, like hungry lips. It's a hot, urgent, piercing pain, intimate, as if a dragon's tongue had lovingly licked my pads, leaving a line of fire. Just behind the toes!

Sexy…

My hard-on threatens to burst my pants. I'm in seventh heaven. The bastinado is painful. Beautifully painful! Sensationally painful! Quite beyond anything I expected…

The minute is over. I'm too chuffed to notice Hein lifting the whip and my feet are relaxed when the lash again cracks against my soles. The fiery tongue licks my pads just below the first cut – and it hurts! Worse than the first one! I yelp and twist in the clamps. "Ouch, ouch, ouch!" The new pain seems to ride on the back of the first, and fire fills my feet.

I bite on my teeth, hissing. The bastinado hurts, really, really hurts! I clench my fists and toes. Wowee, those lucky barefoot slaves certainly paid for their free feet! My hard-on comes back.

Hein stands there, the picture of silicon indifference. The whip dangles from his hand, loosely, but the tip quivers. Eagerly? My blazing soles prickle. How much of the minute is left? No need to hurry, Hein!

But the minute is gone. He lifts his arm and the whip strikes. I brace myself in the nick of time. The crack resounds in the empty garage and I feel the tip slash the lower edge of my forepads. The pain follows, piling pain on pain, red-hot and sharp, flashing up my legs, through my body to the back of my head.

"Damn hell!" I shout, rolling my head and tugging at the clamps. This is seriously sore! Ooh boy, did the bastinado keep its promise – and more! But this was the third one. The last one! I gasp in relief, even while my feet burn as if I'm standing on molten tar. It's over!

Only, it's not. "Sir," he informs me politely, "Sir has thirty five seconds left to give me the safe word."

He wants the safe word again! How did that happen? I think back, but can't remember – probably blown out of my head by those fiery explosions under my feet. He, of course, will remember precisely. The hairs on the back of my neck prickle. Another four lashes, over and above the three already sizzling under my feet! Am I going to experience the bastinado, or what?

Exactly what I want. Need…

"The safe word, Sir?"

Oh, I remember – it's about dusting my feet. With the whip. "You're a Teflon head."

I might as well have a bit of fun. I'm going to pay for it anyway!

"That is not the correct word, Sir." He sounds cybernetically indifferent, but why do I think the flickering in his eyes is more than just electronic? "In accordance with the sequence, I shall give Sir four bonus lashes. Eleven seconds, Sir."

Whoops! Eleven seconds, then once again it's my feet and that spitfire of a whip. The bastinado… the wonderful, terrible bastinado. Awesome!

I wince. Another four cuts…

Hey! How did he come up with the word bonus lashes?

The sudden crack, the blow against my front pads again catches me unawares. Fire erupts under my feet, spurts up my legs. It hurts! It hurts like blazes! As if a blade, razor sharp and red hot, sliced into the balls of my feet! My feet! I writhe and snatch for breath. "No-o-o!"I croak, but even through the waves of flaming pain I remember not to say anything that might make him ask that dangerous, sole-destroying question again. The question I made sure I can never answer…

We wait, I with my feet on fire, he with his silicon complacence. The minute is over long before I'm ready. He lifts the whip, I desperately brace myself, hell breaks loose once more under me. The breath rushes from my lungs. He struck the arches, my soft, pink arches! Volcanic heat ignites, shoots up my legs, bangs into the back of my skull. Fuck, fuck, fuck! It fucking hurts! I want to scream swear words at him, but I'm still struggling for breath when he lowers the whip.

"From Sir's reaction I infer Sir is experiencing a considerable measure of pain," I hear him saying through the ringing in my ears.

I focus my bleary eyes on him. A considerable measure? "It… it hurts more than anything I've ever felt!" I pant. Perhaps my distress will trigger a Protocol response…

"Sir," he says, his voice chillingly matter-of-fact, "the sole of the human foot is more densely packed with nerve endings than any other part of the body, with the exception of the palms of the hands, so they are acutely sensitive to stimulation. In addition, the nervous receptors in the soles do not become replete with myelin, meaning repeated stimulation does not dull their sensitivity. This feature, if Sir will excuse the pun, means Sir will experience mounting pain as I repeatedly apply the whip to Sir's soles. That is why the bastinado has historically always been a favourite punishment."

Despite the furnace beneath me, I gape at him. Thanks for the lecture, you poliplastic know-all, but please tell me how I'm going to survive the nuclear reaction you started in my feet!

"Nineteen seconds, Sir."

I squeeze my eyes shut. Two left! Can I take it?

But I have no say in the matter, of course. The whip strikes again. This time it's my heels. Pain and fire scream up my body, explode white-hot behind my eyes. I shriek, twisting in the clamps. How can anything hurt so much?

When I surface, I hear his scrupulously unconcerned voice. "I have now applied the lashes evenly over the entire extent of Sir's soles. There is one lash of the current set of four bonus lashes left. Where would Sir prefer to receive it? Heels or arches? I suggest the arches again." Through my wet eyes he looks as if he's grinning sadistically. "With their thin skin, they have always been a much-favoured area for the whip."

I clench my fists. He may as well be discussing which side to butter the toast! I lean towards choosing my heels. I always stand on them when my feet burn on a hot sidewalk, so their calluses should be toughest. But through the raging pain I suddenly think: What if he's trying to trick me? What if I tell him where I 'prefer' to be hit, and he asks me for the safe word? Then it's another eight – eight! – bonus lashes!"Just go ahead, Hein," I growl through tight lips.

"Seventeen seconds, Sir."

Do his tactile sensors inform him about pain? Does he, with his superbrain and encyclopedic knowledge, have any conception of what I'm going through? I – and my feet – certainly have. And how!

Did the bastinado need to be so damned excruciating?

The whip jerks me back to reality. To agony. It's in my arches. Unbelievably, it hurts even more than anything I've felt so far, pure, flaming agony tearing up from my feet. I want to scream, but my lungs are empty. Then I gasp,"Hein, you bastard!" I wrestle the cuffs. "THIS HURTS!"

He actually puts down the whip. "Sir will be relieved to learn that was the seventh and last of the bonus lashes." For a moment he stands there in that switched-off way of his, then he says: "Or is Sir?"

What? I'm so taken aback that I actually forget about my sizzling feet for a second. How much does he understand, with that synthetic superbrain of his? And that word bonus lash – that's a word I use for myself. But my feet hurt so urgently that I can't be bothered with anything else.

He must not roll those dice. He must not!

How am I going to stop him?

How could I have been crazy enough to give him absolute power over me? Hand my feet to him on a plate? To him and his whip?

There's movement in my crotch. If he has absolute power over me, I am absolutely powerless!

Exactly like a barefoot slave… Beautiful!

My toes clench. No! It's too painful! The bastinado hurts too much!

It's unfair, I think resentfully. I imagined myself lying between the clamps, perfectly helpless, euphoric, glorying in the exquisite pain of the whip's fiery caresses.

But the reality is that the bastinado is too painful. Which should come as no surprise; that's exactly what everything I read about it said. And now here I am, clamped in the stocks without any chance of getting out, while Hein waits with programmed malevolence to throw the dice. And then to assault my soles again!

A late neuron fires and I jerk. My stomach knots. He knows nothing about pain, but I – and especially my feet, with all those nerve-endings – most certainly do. If he doesn't know about pain, he can by definition never show me any compassion.

The dice! How many more lashes am I going to get? I don't know – again exactly as per plan. But now I – and my feet – know what we're in for. We now know the hard reality of the bastinado.

In real life I could've promised to be a good little slave, just please stop beating my feet, but I made perfectly sure I can't get out of it.

I shudder. I… I can't. I can't take it. More of it. The bastinado is simply too much.

Out of the blue I see a faint flicker of hope. "Hein," I begin. My voice sounds plaintive rather than commanding, but I don't care. Only one thing matters, and that is to keep that whip away from my feet.

He looks at me with his mechanical benevolence. "Does Sir wish to modify the sequence?"

"No!" I yelp. The pain beneath my feet has now settled to a steady blaze. How am I ever be able to walk again?" The Protocol, Hein… what exactly does it say about causing injury?"

He switches to informed concern. "Article One of the Protocol reads: A robot shall in no circumstances do a human being an injury, or stand idly by while a human being is being injured."

I nod down at my smouldering feet. "You don't… you don't think you're doing me an injury here?"

Please say yes! Then you can release me and I can go and sit with my feet in the bath full of cold water.

"Yes, Sir," he says, objectively and reasonably.

Yes-s-s! I can just about feel the cold water embracing my feet, drawing the pain out of them, dowsing the fire. "So then stop it and release me."

"No, Sir," he says, equally objectively and reasonably.

I'm choking, but I keep my voice even. "Hein, you're not being logical."

"I am, Sir. Exception 7 of the Protocol determines that the onus of injury avoidance transfers to the owner when the safe word rule is activated. In that event the robot simply acts as the executing agent on behalf of the owner. That means it is Sir who is injuring Sir; I am simply the medium through which Sir accomplishes the injury, in other words, wielding the whip on Sir's behalf. As soon as Sir says the safeword, the sequence is suspended and Exception 7 no longer applies. Does Sir wish to terminate the sequence?"

I gape at him. I remember the Helix web page blabbing on about the 'fail-safe' safe-word arrangement, but I paid only enough attention to make sure I'd be able to circumvent it.

"Does Sir wish to terminate the sequence?" he repeats.

Yes! "No!" I yell. He will ask me the safe word! My soles feel ready to peel off and head for the hills.

"Fifty seconds left, Sir, then the three minutes are over."

His measured affability freaks me out. How can he be so calm and collected about nuking my feet?

Wait! I think frantically. Didn't I include something about my soles bleeding? That should stop him!

That's my only chance, I realise, aware of the painful(!) irony. My soles need to bleed. The sooner the better. Just how thick is their callus? For the first time in my life I regret going barefoot so much.

Before I can say anything, his voice breaks the silence. "Fifteen seconds, Sir."

My stomach knots. "Then what?" I croak, although I know the answer.

"Then I resume the sequence, Sir. I am now to cast the dice, to determine the number of lashes I should give Sir's feet."

I can't stop him. He is going to continue. He's going to mangle my feet, flay my soles from them, until they are two slabs of raw meat, steaming bloodily.

Hopefully he will then stop. My throat closes.

He picks up the dice, cups his big hand, shakes and rolls them over the work bench. From down here I of course can't see them. That shouldn't matter; the Protocol makes it impossible for him to con me. Not that he needs to. I've already had quite enough lashes, thank you. More than enough.

My heart contracts. What the hell was I thinking? As if to rub it in, one of the overworked neurons in my feet fires a red-hot pang up my leg. I jolt and blink water from my eyes.

"Six and…"

Six! The maximum! I shudder, but my cock goes hard. Because, despite my blazing feet, I still itch for the bastinado…

"And one, Sir. Fewer than ten. I continue rolling the dice."

I relax. That's seven. A great start, without being destructive. Not quite sole-destroying…

I grin. I still want the bastinado. Just how complicated is that?

Weird that it happens to be six and one. Nearly too good to be true. Why didn't I tell him to roll them on the floor?

The dice clickety-click. "Three and five, Sir, equalling eight. Less than ten, so I roll again. Total thus far: fifteen."

He rolls again. "Three and…"

I tense. Three and what? Why doesn't he simply say the numbers? His voice is as humdrum as always, but that gleam in his eyes…Is he enjoying himself?

"… three, Sir. A double."

I gasp. A double! Double three! Twelve! Only three rolls, and I'm already in for twenty seven lashes!

He stands there, imperturbable, the model of controlled enthusiasm, while my insides are boiling over. And my soles go crazy. The dice are on my side! No! On the side of the bastinado!

"That means forty two lashes, Sir."

What? I goggle at him. "How do you get that, Hein? It's twenty seven!"

"No, Sir. According to the instruction set, the total number of lashes doubles each time I roll a double. Hence six plus one plus three plus five plus three plus three, which doubles to twelve, amounts to twenty one, times two. Forty two, Sir."

My hard-on fills my crotch. Boy-o-boy, am I going to be bastinadoed, or what! But my soles flare up and I cringe. No! I… I crave the bastinado, but it is just too painful!

"That's… it, then, Hein?" I croak. "Double three equals twelve, which is more than ten."

"No, Sir. Sir stipulated that doubles do not count. Does Sir wish to alter the sequence?"

No! "No, Hein, just continue." And flog my feet to shreds. It's not up to me, after all.

I made very sure of that.

But I frown. Am I imagining things, or is there something knowing in the way those artificial eyes of his glitter? Just how… How close to human is he? Can he be sadistic? Or is it simply that his superbrain has computed my desire for the bastinado, and he is obliging his master with robotic devotion?

He shoots the dice over the bench top again. Clickety-click… I shut my eyes tightly. Forty two cuts…! And how many more? My little scheme is working too well. Way too well…

A feeling of helplessness overwhelms me. Delicious helplessness, desperate helplessness. Exactly what I wanted… except that the bastinado – my magical bastinado – hurts so awfully.

So awesomely…

"Another three, Sir, and a five. That brings your preliminary total to a neat fifty."

My soles prickle like crazy. Fifty! And it's not over yet! A ten, Hein! Please roll a ten!

The dice clickety-click once more. He looks at them, then at me, and for a moment I think he looks sly, but then he announces with his Teflon-straight face: "Four and three, Sir. Seven." Clickety-click. "Six and five, Sir. Eleven. More than ten. No more dice rolls."

Relief washes over me. No more dice rolls!

He picks up the whip and flicks it against his leg. My eyes bulge. Is he taunting me? Being deliberately sadistic? "Seventy fourlashes, Sir. The final total. Excluding, of course, any bonus lashes Sir might earn."

Seventy four! Seventy four! He's going to mutilate my feet! Wreck them!

I shake my head, my jaw tight. I'm in trouble here. Real, serious trouble! Seventy four lashes! Can't… can't Natasha please pop in for a quick visit?

But I know that won't happen. That's how I planned it, and took painstaking care to ensure. She left early this afternoon, out on one of her regular social adventures. Nothing is going to stop Hein. I wanted to taste the bastinado, and now I'm going to gorge myself on it. Careful what you wish for, the Chinese say, it might come true. How I wished… and how it has come true!

As if in confirmation, a fiery pang shoots up from my feet, making me jerk. I groan.

"Does Sir wish to change the sequence?"

He knows that's not an option! Is he trying to trick me into getting still more cuts?

I strain against the cuffs, scrabbling for the wing nuts. All I achieve is to pinch my wrists.

I am completely, completely helpless. Exactly like a real slave.

And of course, I go hard!

The fire under my feet is now a steady throb, electrifying rather than actually unbearable. C'mon, Hein, I catch myself thinking, get on with it! I've been panting for the bastinado for too long to chicken out now, just because it is so much more painful than I thought.

Not that I can chicken out anyway, because I've been too clever by half. Next time I'll make sure I know exactly what I let myself in for.

Which does nothing for my current calamity!

Lucky me…

I try to swallow, but my throat is bone dry. "Get… get me some water, please, Hein."

"Certainly, Sir," he says, while I realise I have just said please to my robot! Will I ever be able to treat him like a mere mechanical servant again, something that exists only for my convenience? After… after I've been so utterly in his power?

While he's in the kitchen, I again try to reach the wing nuts. No dice. Seventy four lashes! My poor pads! But Google assures me the Arabic bastinado (the real McCoy!)easily goes to as many as a hundred lashes. That means feet can take it…

But can mine? Even with my insatiable lust for the bastinado? I thrill from head to toes. From fear or anticipation? Both, because now I know: With his superb intelligence specifically programmed to cater to his master's whims, Hein must've divined exactly what I want. He knows I want to experience the bastinado, the helplessness of being a barefoot slave. Both in full! And now he's doing his programmed best to make sure he gives me exactly that. With a vengeance! To the nth degree…

"Sir's water."

He bends over me, brimming with silicon solicitousness, lifts my head and holds the glass to my lips. I gulp the water down. From close up his eyes only look glassy. Did you wangle this, Hein? Did you calculate that my feet can take seventy four lashes without bleeding, and made sure that's the total the dice arrived at?

I couldn't see them! I drain the glass, wishing I could sprinkle some water over my sizzling soles. If Hein planned all this, what else is brewing in those too-clever circuits of his? Just how far will he go in his efforts to please me? Too far? Can he even know what is too far? Isn't that precisely why the safe word protocol exists?

Which I bypassed. Talk about being too clever!

If I didn't want – need – the bastinado so badly, this is where I would've panicked.

His next words confirm my suspicions, blowing my mind in the process. "The sequence stipulates I may not whip Sir's feet with sufficient force that they bleed. I have divided the surface area of Sir's soles by the diameter of the tip of the whip. This establishes that the lashes will unavoidably start intersecting from approximately the twenty seventh one."

I gape at him. How can he be so coolly technical about something that's going to hurt me so abominably?

He continues. "The seventy four lashes I am to administer to Sir's feet, together with the eight bonus lashes Sir has already received, adding up to eighty two, will probably cause Sir's soles to bleed, which the sequence forbids."

A conflict! My out! Algorithms can't execute when there is a conflict. Huge relief washes over me. I'm getting out of it! My soles are saved!

"So, Hein, you will have to stop the sequence. There's a conflict."

I feel the tiniest twinge of disappointment, but then…

"No, Sir," he says accommodatingly,"Sir need not be concerned. Measured by the damage the eight bonus lashes effected on Sir's soles, which I gauge are tougher than the norm, I estimate the skin will rupture where four percent of the lashes coincide. The sequence leaves the force with which I should apply the whip to my discretion; amendment of the sequence is consequently not necessary. I shall merely reduce the force I apply by four percent. This means Sir's soles will start bleeding only from the eighty-eighth lash, providing a safe margin. The sequence has to be amended only if Sir wishes me to maintain the same force. Does Sir wish to amend the sequence?"

Dammit, Hein, I AM concerned! It's my soles, the destruction of, we're discussing here! So the bastinado is now applied maths? He's going to whip my feet precisely four percent less horribly? Yippee!

What will my soles be like after another seventy four cuts? Four percent will make no difference at all! "Hein, you're a calculating bastard," I mutter, shuddering at the picture that fills my imagination.

"Does Sir wish to amend the sequence?" he repeats with his programmed patience.

I want you to stop! I scream soundlessly. "Ehm… no, Hein." Just go ahead and butcher my feet. Please.

"I shall resume the sequence within one minute, Sir, applying four percent less force," he informs me equably. "Considering variables such as the uneven thickness of Sir's soles, I shall terminate the sequence if bleeding commences before the calculated number of lashes has been applied."

My stomach knots. This is not just fun anymore, this is the real thing. But… I test the cuffs. Yes, I'm still perfectly helpless. Exactly like a slave, a barefooter on Pedesterra. And, unbelievably, my crazy cock again goes hard!

In a sudden panic I remember what Hein said – that the soles don't lose feeling, even after being flogged repeatedly. Just how much is this going to hurt?

I am – AM – going to find out!

The minute is suddenly over. I barely manage to brace myself before the whip flashes and that now familiar bolt of fire explodes beneath me. I screech, jerking between my anchored hands and feet.

The pain is even more volcanic, if that's possible.

For the prescribed minute there is nothing but the burning pain, then the whip lashes out again. Crack! Lava spews over my soles. "Yow-w-w!" I shriek. Red-hot pain whips up my legs, boils the marrow in my bones, crashes against the back of my skull. My teeth rattle in my jaws. "No-o-o! Fuck, no!"

It's hurting more and more!

For the next three minutes, which feels like one everlasting agony, the whip torments my feet, the pain growing worse with every slash. Tears spout from my eyes. I strain against the cuffs until it feels as if my wrists and ankles want to rip from their sockets. "Fuck, NO!" I roar. "No-o-o!" I have to get away from the pain! I have to get away from my feet!

"Five minutes respite, Sir," Hein informs me. Not kindly. Complacently, with no compassion. His designers forgot to wire him for mercy.

Five minutes, designed to give me time to savour the bastinado. Savour the inferno raging beneath my feet! I close my eyes and work to relax my strained muscles. My feet spit fire. After a while the worst pain subsides a little, to a fiery throb. "Ouch, ouch, ouch!" I moan, sobbing. Stop it! I want to shout at Hein, there where he is standing, a wobbly figure through my watery eyes, the whip in his hand. This is, I realise, the most terrifying thing that has ever happened to me. To my feet. My defenceless feet. My lips pucker to tell him to stop it, but I keep quiet. He'll ask the safe word again…

"Thirty seconds, Sir."

More cuts. Murderously painful cuts. Five…

I screw my eyes shut and turn my head away. How I craved the bastinado – the fiery kiss of the whip, as I lovingly called it in my feverish fantasies.

I had absolutely no idea that it would be so mind-blowingly painful.

Hein moves. I freeze. The whip cracks, its tip spews fire, pure hell erupts under my feet again. I scream, violently writhing between the cuffs. Unbelievably, it hurts even more. The pain is mounting up, like an electric charge, getting ever more horrible. Unbearable.

Exactly as per description.

Again the world ignites under my feet. And again, and again… each new explosion hurting more. And more. Five, and five, and five, and five…

Pure, blazing agony, meted out in fives. Interminably. I lie between my anchored wrists and ankles, utterly helpless, defeated. Unimaginably barefoot.

Barefoot, barefoot slave!

Intermittently I hear: "Five minutes' respite, Sir. "Five lashless minutes, with the pain blazing under my feet, thundering in my head. And then the whip is at my feet again… and again… and again… I have no conception of time, no idea of how many times Hein has slashed away at my soles.

All I know is the searing, all-conquering pain, punctuated by the scariest words I know: "Thirty seconds, Sir."

His cold-blooded courtesy makes my flesh creep. I arch my feet, curling my toes so tightly that my feet feel like clenched fists, the shoelace cutting into my toes. It's no good. The whip flashes, cracks, my soles burst into new flames and white-hot heat rages through my body. I scream. Is it a whip or a super-heated poker? How can each stroke hurt so much, hurt more, every time, time after time?

Because that is what happens. Minute by minute the whip slashes, punctually, infallibly, inevitably. Lightning strikes my feet, scorches my soles in parallel lines of pure fire. And shockingly, incredibly, every lash hurts, burns, flames worse than its predecessor! I strain and jerk against my cuffed hands and feet, I scream and shout, and I know: this is the bastinado. THIS IS THE BASTINADO!

The enthralling bastinado… the appalling bastinado.

Then I hear: "Forty five minutes, Sir. Your fifteen minutes' interlude."

My break! Fifteen minutes without the whip! I relax, overwhelmed with relief, despite my incandescent feet. Thank you, thank you, thank you that I thought of this!

I had an agenda with the interlude. I wanted to lie there, helplessly cuffed, feeling my soles blazing, delighting in the fearsome, awesome bastinado. My soles oblige. They blaze. And BLAZE! I moan and move between the cuffs. What do they look like? Are they bleeding yet? Only fifteen minutes, then it begins again! My gut clenches. How many cuts to go? How many volcanic eruptions are still waiting for my feet…

I shake my head. No, don't think about what's to come! It's quite bad enough as it is, thank you. I lift my head and bend my feet, but can't see their bottoms. "Hein," I squeak, but change my mind. I wanted to ask him to hold a mirror to my feet, but guess what? He'll want the safe word. I jerk as neurons fire painful sparks in my soles. We, they inform me, don't want another eight bonus lashes.

Did I come up with the perfect self-bastinado scheme, or what? Is there a word like autosadism?

"Sir?" He stands beside me, the model of servility – including the whip dangling from his hand. Couldn't he put it away for a bit? "Does Sir wish to amend the sequence?"

I shake my head frantically. "No! No, I don't! But can I ask you something? Without having to say the safe word?"

"Of course, Sir. Anything." My kindly helpmate!

"A-are my feet bleeding yet?"

"No, Sir," he replies, his voice even with calculated reassurance. "The sequence prohibits me from striking Sir's feet with enough force to cleave the skin."

I shudder at his choice of words. "Are you sure?" Why do they then feel as if they've gone through a shredder?

"Certainly, Sir. Does Sir wish to change the sequence and remove the limitation?"

And give you carte blanche to flog my soles till they're spilling blood from every pore? No, Hein, thanks ever so much.

I wriggle and strain against the cuffs. The pain blasting from my feet makes it impossible to think of anything but the precious minutes ticking away. I want out! "Hein," I begin, but my voice sounds hoarse, pathetic. I clear my throat and try again. "Hein, please… just bring me some more water."

"No, Sir," he says. "According to the sequence, I may give Sir only one glass of water per hour." Then, in his unflagging zeal, he continues: "If Sir wants extra water, Sir will have to amend the sequence. Does Sir wish to do so?"

"No!" If only I hadn't been so stupidly clever with the safe word, I would now be watching a movie, my feet bare but unflogged! But here I am, cuffed in the stocks, my feet a hellish blaze – and more to come! Thanks to Hein's unbending devotion to giving me what I want, and my cunning in tricking him to do just that.

If my feet weren't clamped in the cuffs, I would've kicked myself.

He's standing stock-still, in that switched-off way of his. Problem is, just a few minutes, then he'll be all action again. With the whip and my feet!

My heart hammers in my ears. Why can't I send him off on some errand? Because I specified that he should execute no other instruction until the sequence has been completed. In other words, until he has finished beating my feet to a pulp.

I feel like howling hysterically, but swallow hard – and then I have a flash of inspiration. "Hein," I ask carefully – can he sense how wary I am of him? "Hein, this is not to amend the sequence, it's only a question. I'm just asking you a question, so I don't need to supply the safe word, do I?"

"No, Sir."

I dare not give him an excuse to demand the safe word again! I phrase my question carefully. "If you analyse the sequence, are there any coding errors? You know, where the code is faulty?"

His eyes go glassy – glassier – for a nanosecond, then he says: "No, Sir. I must congratulate Sir. Your sequence is faultless and I could translate it into errorless code."

Thanks for the double-edged compliment, I think sourly. "So… there's no way I can prevent you from giving me all the… all the cuts?"

"Only two events will prevent me from executing the sequence in full, Sir. One is if Sir gives me the safe word and aborts the instruction set."

The safe word! That all-important word I ensured with sole-searing thoroughness not to know! "But… What if I'd forgotten the safe word? Surely the Protocol provides for that?"

"No, Sir."

No, Sir? That's all? "Are you sure? Has nobody ever forgotten a safe word?"

"Since a sequence cannot be encoded without a safe word, Sir, the Protocol does not provide for that eventuality."

Which I got around without much of a sweat. My soles reward me with a surge of heat and I flinch. I've got to stop him! "And the other event?"

"In accordance with the instruction set, I have to terminate the sequence if Sir's soles begin to bleed."

"Is… is there a chance that you would… that the whip would cut my skin?" I ask hopefully. "Any time soon, I mean?"

"None whatsoever, Sir," he reassures me, the very model of a robot who has nothing but his owner's well-being on his electronic mind. "Let me explain in more detail, Sir. I applied magnetic resonance to gauge the thickness of Sir's soles. The factor is 7.11, 3.7 above the average. This is ample to sustain at least ninety strokes, at the force I am currently applying. I shall of course maintain visual observation throughout. Skin texture is not entirely consistent."

I stare at him aghast. He'd flay the soles off my feet as casually as clip my nails.

"Your allotted number of cuts is seventy four, Sir. Eighty two, allowing for the additional eight strokes you received as a bonus. Six strokes short of the rupture level. There is nothing to worry about."

My feet getting flogged to within six strokes of being mincemeat is nothing to worry about? And what about bonus cuts?

He swishes the whip. It reminds me of a tiger lashing its tail."Thirty seconds, Sir."

My insides lump together. Is there no way I can stop him?

There isn't. And it feels as if the fifteen minutes' wait has done nothing but refresh the nerve-endings in my feet, because the first lash flames like a white-hot poker searing my soles. Heat whips up my body, boiling the soft tissue of my brain. I scream.

Somehow I survive five strokes. I lie between the cuffs, unable to move, replete with the irresistible pain. Someone is whimpering, moaning pitifully; I realise it's me. An inferno rages beneath my feet. Pain surges in my arteries, the marrow bubbling in my bones. My scalp is too tight. Please, can time just stop, can the respite just last…

But my tormentor is Hein, the most advanced android available. With atomic-clock punctuality, every five minutes, it starts all over again. Like lightning striking the same place – my feet! – over and over. Over and over and over again, astonishingly getting more and more painful with every lash. The furnace beneath my feet burns higher and higher, flames more and more fiercely, until I know nothing but the purest, hottest agony.

I jerk around between the cuffs like an eel on dry ground, trying to get away from my blazing soles. When I manage to gasp enough breath, I bray like a crazed mule.

The bastinado is way above my pain threshold. Way, way above!

There's only one way for me to stop Hein. I've got to guess the safe word. During one of my respites, my desperately too-short respites, I shut my eyes and try to visualise the page with the words. But I took the greatest pains to ensure that I couldn't read the words – even holding the page upside down when I cut them out. And then I not only shuffled the strips, I turned them over, too. And kept my eyes shut until I'd picked one to give Hein. The strip was, I seem to think, quite long. A longish word, then.

In spite of my aching feet I smile sardonically. A good beginning! Add to that the fact that I know it's an English word, all I need is to try all the long English words. With the English vocabulary being what it is, I'll be getting a million bonus cuts in no time.

And suddenly, shockingly, Hein lifts his arm again…

Hein and his whip, the overwhelming pain, my utter helplessness, my sacrificial feet, that's my reality. All of my reality. The regular cracking of the whip against my soles, the volcanic eruption, the fleeting moments of respite. Moments when I lie there, the incredulous, horrified victim of my own little arrangement to taste the bastinado. My infernally successful arrangement.

Then, after an eternity of agony, I'm waiting for the next one, but nothing happens. I bite down on my teeth and peer at Hein. Blinking the tears out of my eyes, I see what I can't believe: he has put the whip down! Can it be? Has he stopped? Has the Protocol… Please! "Are… are my feet b-bleeding, Hein?" Please let my feet be haemorrhaging and he has –

His uncaring voice announces: "That was the seventy-fourth lash, Sir. Terminating the main phase of Sequence Bastinado."

At first I can't believe it, can't imagine that the torment, the horror, is finally, finally over. The pain in my feet rages on unabated, though, as if the nerves down there are too outraged to calm down. But then it strikes me: it really is over! Hein has put the whip down!

"Initiating phase three of Sequence Bastinado, Sir."

Phase three? I try to recall what that might be, but the pain has taken over my brain.

He takes the chain and padlocks and bends down at my feet. Don't touch them! I want to scream, but I've learnt to be careful. I must please, please, please not be asked for the safe word again! He locks the chain around my ankles, without touching my feet, then unties my toes and unscrews the wing nuts. I lift my feet, trying to see their bottoms, but he gets in the way as he moves up to my hands and releases them, too. Then he grabs me under the armpits and hoists me upright. I groan and shriek as my lacerated feet touch the floor.

He, of course, is unmoved. "Come on, Sir, I am walking you to the bedroom."

I whimper as he forces me, step by screamingly painful step, through the kitchen and down the short passage to my bedroom. I gratefully stumble to the bed and fall down, moaning. His hands are at my ankles, chain chinks, a click sounds, and when I try to bend my knees, I realise my feet are chained to the bar at the foot of the bed.

"Hein," I croak, "why are you chaining me to the bed?"

He says something about the sequence, but I can't listen. The pain is simply too much. I give up, my eyes close and merciful blackness overtakes me, takes me away from the pounding agony, the piercing heat emanating from my feet.

Somewhere deep in the night I surface, waking up to the throb of pain. I groan and try to draw my legs up, but the chain around my ankles rattles obstinately. After a moment I shift my body down until I can reach my feet. I touch them very, very carefully.

They're hot, sweaty and swollen. I gingerly feel around their edges – serrated edges – and warily probe the soles. The skin is corrugated with welts, feeling rough and warm. Just how much damage has been done? Belatedly I remember the bedside lamp and strain against the chain to reach the switch.

The room lights up and for a moment I panic. What if Hein objects? My soles prickle right through their fiery layer, but I relax when I remember he is programmed to connect to his pod to recharge his batteries at night.

My feet… I stare in alarm. They look cherry red and half their size again. And their bottoms… I swallow. Where I used to have pads and arches, there is now only a welter of purple bruises, a pattern of ruby red spots showing where the slashes from the whip crossed each other. Again panic pushes up my throat. How long will they take to heal? Before I'll be able to walk again? I flex my feet experimentally and flinch at the angry pang of pain.

Damn, damn, damn! How could I have been so stupid?

But then I very nearly smile. That's the bastinado for you! I wanted it, so badly wanted to experience it, and now I have. To the hilt!

Thanks, Hein, I mutter, switch off the light and turn on my back, testing the chain locking my ankles to the steel bar. Then I close my eyes and focus on the furnace beneath my feet, sensing my blazing soles, the waves of volcanic heat, remembering the fiery tongue of the whip licking, licking, licking…

I sigh. Closer to a barefoot slave I'll never be able to get!

I move my pants out of the way and barely touch my cock, a rod of steel, before I come cataclysmically.

I love the bastinado, the magnificent bastinado, I mutter, and fall asleep again.

"Sir! Wake up, Sir. It's six o'clock."

Leave me alone! I want to sleep! I don't want to face the pain!

But he shakes my shoulder and suddenly I'm there, on my bed, remembering walking, walking, walking over an endless plain, the black, burning floor of hell.

"Good morning, Sir," he says with his customary, programmed chipperness.

I struggle to get my eyes open and focused. "Goo-" I begin, then I'm fully awake – and aware of my feet."Yow!" I howl. "My feet!"

But, to my surprise, the pain is no longer actually monstrous. There's a solid throbbing and a feeling of acute sensitivity, but the agonising, volcanic heat is gone. Am I feeling just the least bit disappointed?

"Sir's coffee."

The smell of fresh, steaming coffee is suddenly stronger than the pain. I gratefully take the mug, hold it under my nose – Hein makes proper filter coffee, freshly ground, with hot milk; it smells wonderful – and then take a sip. "Thanks, Hein, this is heaven."

"My pleasure, Sir," he responds, politely eager always, and goes into his switched-off, waiting mode.

"Get me some rusks, will you? The buttermilk ones, I think." I try to draw my legs up, but come up short as the chain chinks – just as he says: "The sequence does not provide for rusks, Sir. Does Sir wish to change it?"

And I'm suddenly back in Sequence Bastinado. The safe word! The whip! Bonus lashes! My feet clench in fright and I cringe. "No! No, Hein, everything is fine! No need to change the sequence!"

"Very good, Sir," he says benevolently. "Eleven minutes."

Eleven minutes? What…? I choke as I remember. The instruction set! Twenty minutes after waking me up he's going to ask me the safe word again! I put the coffee down. He's going to roll the dice again! What if it comes up double six?

I jerk my feet against the chain. Please no! No more of that hell!

But I am a barefoot slave. I have no say. I pick up the mug and finish the coffee, barely aware of the smooth warmth slipping down my throat. My feet are bare and chained and they are going to receive more lashes from my master's whip. How many is not for me to decide; all I know is they will be on top of the laceration he gave my feet last night. And it will again be unimaginably painful. That's my reality. I can do nothing about it. Because I am a barefoot slave.

I finish my coffee, trying not to pay attention to my desperately prickling soles. Or my unbelievable hard-on!

"One minute, Sir," he intones.

I hand him the mug and lie back. He takes the cup to the kitchen – he is as infallibly exact in executing his domestic duties as he is with wielding the whip. When he returns, he waits for the precise second, then unlocks the padlocks and takes me by the arm. I have no choice but to put my feet on the floor. There's the hairy texture of the shaggy carpet, then the smooth tiles feel cool to my feverish soles. He marches me to the garage. I limp on my raw soles, but they actually hurt less than I expected.

When he switches on the light, I flinch at the sight of the stocks – and the whip lying like a snake ready to strike on the bench top. My insides lurch. Like before, he places his boot behind my heels and trips me backward. I sink down on the floor. He places my wrists in their cuffs. I don't resist. He tightens the wing nuts. I move my hands. They're caught. Then he locks my feet in the top cuffs. I pull my legs a little, but I know it is perfectly useless. He ties my toes together. Once again, I am thoroughly helpless, my soles splayed wide open, ready for the whip.

My cock hardens.

Hein looks down at me. I tense. "What is the safe word?" he asks, his Teflon face dead-pan. His eyes flicker. Intelligently. Knowingly. Dangerously!

"Master…"

"That is not the correct safe word. In accordance with the instruction set, I shall now roll the dice."

He picks up the dice and they clickety-click over the bench top. I cringe, but my crotch heats up. I know what that sound means!

What if it's a double?

"Five and three. Eight lashes."

Eight! I'm not too disappointed. Eight beautiful, fiery kisses of the whip…

He picks up the whip. Ecstatic fear grips me. I know what's coming.

"The sequence does not specify whether I should again whip your feet at intervals, like before. Shall I adapt the sequence?"

Whatever I wish does not matter, Master. Anyway, you would ask me the safe word again, and then flog my feet some more. "No…"

Is that the gleam of mastery I see in his glass eyes? Without a word he assumes his whipping position at my feet. I tense. He draws his arm back, the whip snaking hungrily. I arch my feet and clench my toes. The whip cracks and that red-hot pain, shockingly familiar, again explodes in my soles, again fires up my legs, again crashes into the back of my skull.

I bellow, twisting between the cuffs. How can something I love so much be so hatefully painful? When I can focus on Hein again, his whip arm is hanging down. The minute! He's going to give me a precious minute, like before.

Does he have some empathy, after all?

The minute passes in a blaze of pain and he lifts the whip. My feet arch, the lash slashes and the pain again overpowers me. I moan and squirm, grinding my teeth, jerking my head from side to side.

The pain flames higher and higher with every lash of the whip, the fiery agony I now know so well, the sole-searing agony named bastinado. Tears stream from my eyes, I beg, I scream, I jerk between the cuffs.

And then Hein drops his arm. Five lashes – and five minutes respite! Five minutes without the lash stoking up the fire under my feet. I shut my eyes, trying to think of something other than the unbearable heat radiating from my soles, but the bastinado doesn't allow this. The pain fills my being, flames in every fibre of my body, consumes me.

The bastinado is the king of pain.

I worship it, I hate it.

Three more lashes, I console myself, then it's over. Then…

Suddenly, despite my burning soles, I feel a moment of regret. Only three more lashes of the bastinado, because I'll never run Sequence Bastinado again. I'll probably have to sell Hein – my master – since the unknown safe word is required to erase the sequence from his memory. I hope his next owner never sings Bachelor Boy.

"Three more lashes, Sir," my implacable master says.

The five minutes are over. I wait, my soles, all of me, open to the explosion of hot, intimate pain. Three times the whip cracks, sending fire up my body, scorching my being. My history with the bastinado ends in a magnificent crescendo of pure agony.

He puts the whip down. "Ten minutes before I release you."

Ten minutes, then it's over. My feet are unmitigated agony, but a deep joy infuses me, brighter than the pain. I've tasted the bastinado, and it's perfect, the ultimate barefoot experience.

However, I won't be doing it again. The bastinado is simply too painful.

Luckily I'm not really a barefoot slave!

I strain against the cuffs, experiencing that lovely helplessness. Should I keep Hein? Can I give him a new, less…ambitious programme?

I shake my head vehemently. No! The beauty of Sequence Bastinado, of Hein with his superb mind, is that I should not know the safe word. I can't risk that again.

But for now I lie there, thrilling to the pain raging beneath my feet, savouring my helplessly cuffed wrists and ankles, being a barefoot slave for the last time. I smile. Isn't this exactly what I imagined, in my innocence, before colliding with the volcanic reality of the bastinado? Being perfectly helpless, my soles on fire, enchanted by the exquisite agony that is the bastinado?

But now I, and my feet, know its truth.

The bastinado is just too fundamentally, perfectly painful!

I sigh. What if my deepest desire, that it should turn out Pedesterra actually exists and I can magically be transported there, of course as a barefooter, should suddenly come true, with the knowledge I now have of the bastinado? Would I, as I used to think, jump at the opportunity with both bare feet, unhesitatingly?

One of those furious pangs flame up in my feet and I flinch.

But… I think… I think I would!

"Ten minutes." He moves to my feet and releases the clamps. I let my feet drop to the floor. It is finally, finally over!

He uncuffs me. I immediately curl my legs up, holding my breath. But my soles don't look nearly as wrecked as I thought they would – in fact, they appear only bruised. Bruised all over, deeply, like one big, blotchy purple welt, from behind the toes to the edges of the heels. I gingerly stroke them with my fingertips. They feel hot, feverish and rough to the touch, and I cringe. Will I be able to walk? I have to get to the bath!

"Hein," I croak, clear my throat and try again. "Hein, please help me to the bathroom."

"Certainly," he says, his voice modulated to convey perfect devotion to my every wish. Like my wish to feel the bastinado…

He wants to pick me up bodily again, but I stop him. I have to see whether I can walk. With his girder-like arm under my armpit, he supports me and I limp down the passage to the bathroom. Spikes of pain shoot up my legs and my feet feel too swollen to flex, but I make it there. "Run me a luke-warm tub, please," I mutter, too taken up with the painful goings-on beneath me to realise I'm saying please again.

I sink down in the water – which is precisely the right temperature. I just lie there, spent, feeling the sweat of my agony washing off me, my overtaxed muscles relaxing, the pain seeping out of my feet – well, a little, anyway.

After a while I catch myself smiling. So, I did it! I tasted the bastinado, I sacrificed my soles on the altar of barefootness! My cock lifts its head and I shut my eyes. The bastinado is survivable! I could've been a barefoot slave – I've proved it!

But once I've climaxed, I sober up. No, the bastinado should be limited to a maximum of ten – OK, twenty! – lashes a week.

So, if the poor, lucky slave is sentenced to forty lashes, he'd have time to shiver in anticipation.

Come on, you guys! Time bandits, intergalactical slavers – I'm available!

Meanwhile, I'm keeping Hein.

After about two hours, I managed to struggle to the bedroom on my own. I flop down on the bed, aware of the chain and open padlocks, my ankles remembering their grip again. But for now I'm happy. "Hein," I call, "please… I mean, see if you can find some cream for my feet." I have to stop saying please to him!

He returns a minute later with a jar of skin cream. "Do you want me to apply it to your feet?" he asks.

I freeze. The safe word! But then I realise Sequence Bastinado is over. Still, I can't trust anyone near my feet. "No, thanks, Hein, I'll see to it myself. Go make me some more coffee, please. And I want two rusks, the buttermilk ones."

He walks out and I remember to take some photos of my feet, then I dip two fingers into the jar. At first I'm afraid of touching my soles, but when I smear some cream over my left pad, the cool smoothness is instant heaven. I slaver my soles and lightly rub the cream in, imagining doing the same to a pretty little slave girl's pretty little flogged feet.

The coffee and rusks hit the spot. I turn on my stomach and fall asleep.

When I awake, I immediately sense my feet are better – still aching, but it's more like a background buzz of pain than the pounding agony I remember. And I'm also hungry! I rub some more cream onto my feet and call out to Hein.

He appears. I look up at him – and my soles prickle. I take myself in hand. "Get me some breakfast, Hein," I say, making sure to sound firm. "Two eggs, bacon, hot toast with lots of butter, juice, you know the drill, I'm famished."

"Five minutes, Sir," he says, and my toes clench. I grin. Those words will forever bring back the memory of the whip…

I dress, fresh shorts and a T, then wonder about my feet. Should I put on my flipflops? No! This is the aftermath of the bastinado, part of what I wanted to experience. If I were a barefooter, this would've been it – my feet would've been bare, full stop. I limp to the kitchen, acutely aware first of the carpet feeling too coarse, then the soothing tiles.

Hein has already set the table. I sit down and take a swig from the glass of tomato juice. I frown. Just why did he choose tomato juice? To remind me of what my soles could've looked like? And nearly do…

But the bacon sizzles and I sniff appreciatively. Hein is a treasure!

A dangerous treasure…

I spend the day quietly, though I limp outside a few times to test my feet, to enjoy the hypersensitivity of my soles. Even the lawn is too prickly, while I don't manage the gravel at all. Being a barefoot slave is a tough life! Beautifully tough…

Natasha luckily is not there. She would've noticed.

But by afternoon my feet are definitely beginning to recover. My soles still sport their bruised look, yet the pain, though ever-present and spikey, is not actually insufferable. I've changed my mind about Hein and Sequence Bastinado. I'll keep him. One day I'll again be brave – or reckless – enough.

But not anytime soon!

By early evening I'm feeling on top of the world. I'm still stepping carefully, but my feet clearly have survived. I've achieved everything I wanted! Cheated the safe word and been really, truly bastinadoed! Helplessly cuffed to the stocks and chained for the night also! Genuinely helpless, with no control over how many lashes I get or about being chained! Been the barefoot slave of my heart's desire.

OK, I'll have to work on my relationship with Hein; I've been saying please again.

"Hein!" I bark. "Order me a pizza – you know what I like."

"Certainly," he says, then my feet cringe when he continues: "Do you wish to…"

But he's not requiring the safe word, he only wants to know if I want Coke as well. I peremptorily order him to get Coke if we have no more.

While he's WhatsApping, I decide the nonsense with my being leery of him has to stop. I'm the boss, after all.

But my soles prickle…

It's a balmy evening and I go out on the front stoep to wait for the pizza guy, anticipating an enjoyable evening watching a DVD, probably Momentum with the delectable Olga Kurylenko running around Cape Town in her pretty bare feet, then being captured and getting those same pretty feet tortured.

Natasha comes out of her door, in jeans and a fluttery top. "Going out again, Party Girl?" I call to her.

She laughs. "Big night! You staying in again?"

Behind me, Hein says: "Delivery in seven minutes."

Natasha doesn't see him; in fact, she doesn't know about him. As she opens her car door, she calls out: "Enjoy, Bachelor Boy!"

It takes me a second to realise what she's done. By then it's too late. Hein's iron fist closes around my arm. "Initiating Sequence Bastinado."