THE MAGISTRATE
by J. Kent Allred

She was stepping into a situation where she could neither lose nor find herself, yet the void in her stomach still gave her the sensation of a free fall. It was a familiar feeling, one she had spent a lifetime trying to identify, until one day her mother told her about the moment she had been born and the delivering doctor’s pant leg had gotten tangled in the birthing stirrup whereupon he tripped, sending the newborn child air-born, only to be caught six feet across the room by a surprised medic. When she finally learned of the event in her early-adulthood, everything made sense… her divorce, her eating disorder, her fear of snakes and bare feet. The riddle of life had finally been solved.

She instantly recognized Dr. M. from the missing nail on his right index finger. She recalled the repulsion she experienced from it when it was upon her. He never shared his true identity during their encounters, but liked to be referred to as “your Magistrate.”  He bought a Japanese schoolgirl uniform for her to wear and paid for a new pair of panties each time he fulfilled his fantasy. He enjoyed placing her across his lap and spanking her vigorously (but not necessarily painfully.)  After the third time, she’d learned to retreat to the bathroom prior to the masquerade, to cut  a wedge in the side hems of the panties with her nail clippers, so when he tore them away it would not “cloth-burn” her thighs.  

She didn’t mind Dr. M., even though he was a trifle demanding, he was also a quick client, reliable, safe, predictable, and a good tipper. She learned to tolerate the repugnant hand. Take the good with the bad.

Thym was no plain-Jane, she was not elegant nor alluring, but more exotic, foreign.  Finished qualities were abundant, straight, shoulder-length, black hair, pale skin, and slightly slanted eyes that changed colors when she occasionally wore a green dress.   She was not tall, but on the other hand certainly not short by any means, slender, and did not have the traditional hourglass figure, but more lean and taut, almost lizard-like in a supine position.

“I know you,” she said upon entering his office.

“Of course you do,” he replied. “Maggie, could you give Ms. Weller and I some privacy,” he said as he dismissed his secretary who had previously introduced Thym.

“Of course, Dr. Shamin,” the secretary replied as she closed the door behind her. Thym sat in one of the plastic, hardback chairs facing his desk.

“I’m president of the school board, Dr. Bruce Shamin, and your Thym. Thym Weller,” his piercing green eyes evoking malicious intent. “I knew it was you the second I laid eyes on your resume. After all, how many “Thyms” are there in the world? It is only occurring to me at this particular moment how absurd it is that you were actually using your real name.”

While parents in Northern Maine were famous for naming their children after strong, emotional verbs, such as “Love,” “Desire,” and “Echo,” “Tyme” was a unique twist on a twisted tradition.

“Would you rather pay for Thym -- or a Wendy, or a Becky I suppose?  I was a long, long way from home. Therefore, I saw no harm in it,” she said matter-of-factly. “Yes, I remember you.” 

“’The Magistrate,’ you remember that is, not Dr. Bruce Shamin?” 

“Yes. Yes sir, Dr. M… doctor Shamin.” She was still trying to comprehend the coincidence of the encounter.

“You must be wondering how all this came about,” he swirled his hand casually adjacent to his head, as if to indicate a whirl-wind of genius was spinning just outside the vicinity of his brain. “I took the job in Presque Isle two years ago. That would explain why you have not seen me for quite some time. Portland is quite a drive, and although you know how attached I was to our encounters, 287 miles was just too much to endure. You can only imagine, I’m sure.”

“I wondered what happened to you,” she lied.

“And I wondered about you as well, Thym, I have thought about you often. We were so wonderful together; I replay our evenings over and over in my head.”

He awaited a comparable response; she did not reciprocate. There was a dead, empty, uncomfortable damper over the room. “So,” he continued, “here were are again, together at last. Did you miss me?”

She was taken aback, unsure how to approach the question… this “meet and greet” was not at all what she had expected. “Well… I… don’t know, I mean, I miss the money that is, I mean, I don’t do that anymore, um, do you understand Dr. Shamin that I am here to…”

“You may call me, Bruce, at least behind closed doors. No more of that, ‘Your Magistrate’ nonsense.  And Dr. Shamin in public, of course.”

“But do you understand?  There won’t be any closed doors, Dr. Shamin.  I’m here to teach third graders.”

“Really?  You think that is why you are here, Thym?”

“Yes… I do.  Teaching is what I do now.”

He nodded, mocking her.

She continued, “My past life is in my past. It was a way to pay for college.” She squirmed in her chair momentarily as she searched for an angle, “It was a means to an end, if you will. I have no intention of continuing down that path.  I’m here for my mother; she needs me now. Then I saw the opening and… My mother, she is not…”

“And my wife needs me, but she’s a bore.”

“So that makes me the…”

“Oh, no, no, no, no!  My dear, you are so much more to me than just that.”  He was slightly recumbent in his leather chair with an F. Buckley pose, the beastly finger rapping upon his jawbone, just beneath his ear lobe.
“But I’m here. I’m not here for that.”

He leaned towards her; the hinge of his chair released an antiquated, traumatic screech as if it had been pent up for years.  It was painful to her ears, like nails across a chalkboard. He placed his elbows on his desk and cradled his chin into his hands, “But you do want the job, don’t you?”