Twice a year, towards the conclusion of the term, the junkie headmistress calls an assembly for the purpose of spanking Babe before the school. What there is of a faculty sits stage rear on a dais; center stage, pinkly spotlit, the junkie headmistress poses on an adjustable piano stool, arms akimbo, knees spread wide apart. Silence, in the stillness, falls, and with it Babe enters, stage right, in the official Girls School uniform of navy blazer, white blouse, short subdued tartan skirt, knee socks and loafers. Over her head she wears the black silk drawstring bag peculiar to this ceremony, a Girls School tradition adapted at its founding from an earlier form. The Trustees still attend sometimes, joining the faculty onstage. At a signal from the junkie headmistress, a young girl from the youngest class who has accompanied Babe onstage escorts her to the footlights, where the two perform a brief curtsey. Then the girl leads Babe to the knees of the junkie headmistress and helps lay her down across them. The junkie headmistress strokes Babe's skirt with her palm for a full minute before yanking it up with the greatest violence imaginable, at which the young girl slips off Babe's skimpy underpants and withdraws backstage. All is ready now. The junkie headmistress raises her arm, and the first blow falls, eliciting a sigh from Babe. Blow follows blow then for awhile, Babe breathing more and more audibly. The spotlight strains, deepens: soon the scene glows red and Babe is clutching at the thigh of the junkie headmistress, writhing in her lap; her right hand and forearm are lost to view inside the older woman's skirt. The junkie headmistress starts to grunt and groan, to make animal noises and crazy mournful sounds. She sways forward over Babe, brushing her back with her breasts; then she leans back, her neck arching so far that the faculty suspended upside down are all she could possibly see if she were looking. More than the blows, this snapping of her head back and forth on her neck comes to direct the flow, the beat of the occasion; her hair coming loose, a cresting wave obscures Babe from view at one moment and at the next, withdrawing, lays her bare; and sometimes there's a break, a pause, while behind the curtain of thick hair the junkie headmistress stops to bite and claw Babe's ass, drawing drops of blood--wetly black in the next blaze of red light--that she slaps away like flies.