Chapter 7: Fight in the hallway
The leather strap had left a deep, humming warmth that permeated every moment of Kim’s morning. Sitting in her Intro to Poli-Sci lecture was a study in controlled discomfort, each shift in the hard plastic chair sending a fresh pulse through her. She’d pulled on soft, loose jeans, but the fabric still felt like sandpaper against the tender landscape of her skin. Her father’s words, “Maybe a good strapping would help you remember,” played on a loop in the back of her mind, a grim counterpoint to the professor’s droning lecture on geopolitical frameworks.
By the time she hit the art wing hallway for her free period, the soreness had settled into a persistent, distracting throb. The air here was different—thick with the turpentine-and-clay scent of creativity, the walls a chaotic mosaic of student projects. She was heading for a secluded bench to maybe just close her eyes for five minutes when the voice cut through the low murmur of passing students.
“Think you’re so special, Possible?”
Kim stopped, her shoulders tightening. She knew that voice. Halli. A junior with a perpetually sour expression and a talent for getting under Kim’s skin. Last week, it had been a snide comment about Kim’s “frequent unexplained absences.” Kim had let it slide. Today, she didn’t have the bandwidth.
“Not now, Halli,” Kim said, not turning around, her voice flat.
“Or what? You’ll save the world from me?” Halli’s laugh was a short, nasty bark. She stepped into Kim’s path. Her red hair was a shade too bright, her eyes narrowed. “You walk around here like you own the place. Like you’re better than everyone. Newsflash: you just got your rich daddy to buy your way in.”
Something hot and brittle snapped inside Kim. It wasn’t the words themselves; it was the day, the lingering sting, the exhaustion, the sheer audacity of this nobody picking at a thread she couldn’t afford to unravel. All her professional discipline vanished.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Kim hissed, her green eyes flashing.
“I think I do.” Halli smirked, reaching out and giving a sharp, painful tug on a strand of Kim’s signature red hair.
That was the trigger.
Kim’s hand shot out, not with a fighter’s precision, but with a brawler’s rage. She didn’t go for a pressure point or a disarm. She grabbed the back of Halli’s designer jeans and yanked, hard, hauling the waistband up with a ruthless efficiency. Halli let out a shocked, undignified yelp as the denim bit deep.
“You bitch!” Halli screeched, scrambling backwards, her hands flying to her own rear.
Before Halli could recover, Kim closed the distance. Smack. Smack. Smack. Three sharp, resonant cracks of her palm against the seat of Halli’s jeans, right there in the middle of the hallway. It wasn’t strategic. It was primal, a release of all the frustrated tension coiled in her muscles. A small circle of students had frozen, their conversations dying mid-sentence.
“What is the meaning of this?”
The voice was cool, clear, and sliced through the chaos. Miss Simmons stood at the door of the art studio, her arms crossed. At twenty-six, she was young for a teacher, but her presence was absolute. Her gaze moved from Halli, flushed and humiliated, to Kim, whose chest was heaving with adrenalized anger.
“She started it!” Halli whined, pointing a trembling finger.
“She pulled my hair,” Kim countered, the fight draining out of her, replaced by a cold drip of dread. This was not discreet. This was not controlled.
“My office. Now.” Miss Simmons didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t need to. She turned on her heel, expecting obedience.
The walk to the small, windowless annex office felt miles long. The ticking of an old clock on the wall was the only sound. Miss Simmons gestured to the two hard-backed chairs facing her desk. “Sit.”
They sat. Kim’s earlier fire was ash now. She felt ten years old.
Miss Simmons didn’t sit behind the desk. Instead, she went to a tall storage cabinet, unlocked it, and pulled something out. Kim’s breath hitched.
It was a paddle, but unlike any school disciplinary tool Kim had ever seen. It was clearly a former art project, about two feet long and sanded smooth. One side was painted with a bizarre, almost medieval scene of a cartoon figure getting spanked. The other side was pristine, pale wood. It looked both ridiculous and terrifyingly effective.
“You both know the policy on physical altercations,” Miss Simmons said, leaning the paddle against her desk. She looked at them, her expression unreadable. “You are both adults, technically. But you’ve chosen to act like children in my hallway. So, you will be corrected like children. Here. Now.”
Halli made a small, choked sound. “You can’t—”
“I can, and I will. It’s this, or a formal report to the disciplinary board. Which will go on your permanent record. Your choice.”
Silence. Heavy and complete.
“Stand up. Turn around. Bend over and place your hands on the seats of your chairs.”
The instructions were delivered with a chilling matter-of-factness. Kim moved mechanically, her mind strangely blank. This was a different universe from her father’s study. There was no warmth here, no underlying love, just cold consequence. She heard Halli sniffling beside her, doing the same.
The rustle of denim. Miss Simmons was efficient. She unbuttoned Kim’s jeans, pulled the zipper down, and tugged them, along with her cotton underwear, to her knees in one swift motion. The air in the room was cool on Kim’s exposed skin, still faintly marked from the morning. Halli let out a mortified sob as she received the same treatment.
“Twenty each. You will count. You will thank me. If you straighten up, we start over.”
The first swat landed on Kim before she was ready. CRACK. The sound was explosive in the small room, a flat, dense report that seemed to vibrate in Kim’s bones. A searing line of fire bloomed across the center of her bottom.
“One,” Kim forced out, her voice tight. “Thank you, Miss Simmons.”
CRACK. Halli’s turn. Her cry was more of a gasp.
“O-one! Thank you!”
The paddle was a maestro of pain. It didn’t thud like a hand or bite like the strap. It spread a devastating, deep heat that sank in and then radiated outwards. Miss Simmons was methodical, alternating between them, painting a comprehensive tapestry of agony from the crest of their bottoms down to the tops of their thighs. Kim’s world shrank to the tick of the clock, the sharp intake of breath before each impact, the struggle to push the number out through clenched teeth.
“Fifteen. Thank you, Miss Simmons.”
Tears were streaming down Kim’s face now, silent and hot. Her knuckles were white where she gripped the chair. Halli was audibly weeping.
The final five were a blur of white-hot pain, each one layering onto the last until Kim felt like she was hovering outside herself, watching two college girls getting their bare backsides paddled in a teacher’s office. It was surreal, humiliating, and utterly inescapable.
“Twenty. Thank you, Miss Simmons.” Kim’s voice was a ragged whisper.
The paddle stopped. The silence returned, broken only by Halli’s hiccupping sobs.
“Pull your clothing up. You may sit.”
Moving was agony. The rough denim felt like a cheese grater against her ravaged skin. Kim sat with exquisite care, every nerve ending screaming.
“You are dismissed. Any repeat performance, and the board will be involved. Do you understand?”
They both nodded, unable to meet her eyes.
Kim stumbled out of the office first, her gait stiff and awkward. She needed air, space, to be anywhere but here. She pushed through a side door into a dim, unused courtyard, collapsing onto a cold concrete bench. She buried her face in her hands, the heat in her cheeks rivaling the fire in her rear. The adrenaline was gone, leaving only a hollow, shaky shame.
“Rough day, Princess?”
The voice was a familiar, smoky drawl from above. Kim looked up, wiping hastily at her eyes.
Shego leaned against the wall, having apparently dropped down from the roof. A faint, amused smirk played on her lips. She was out of her villainous blacks, dressed in dark jeans and a leather jacket, looking for all the world like a slightly dangerous grad student.
“What do you want, Shego?” Kim’s voice was drained.
“Just passing by. Heard some interesting sounds from a certain office.” Shego’s eyes, glowing faintly green, raked over Kim with undisguised interest. “Saw you walking out like you were trying not to sit down. Let me guess… Daddy’s strap wasn’t enough? Had to go get a lesson from the schoolmarm too?”
The accuracy was a punch to the gut. Kim just stared, too raw to even form a retort.
Shego pushed off the wall and took a step closer, her smirk softening into something more curious, more intimate. “You know, for a girl who can take down super-villains before breakfast, you sure do spend a lot of time over someone’s knee.” She crouched down, her voice dropping. “Or in this case, holding onto a chair for dear life.”
Kim looked away, at a crack in the concrete. “It’s none of your business.”
“Maybe not.” Shego stood up, her tone shifting back to casual. “But if you’re gonna keep collecting punishments like trophies, you might want to invest in a better cushion. Or a less trigger-rich environment.” She turned to leave, then paused. “Oh, and Kim? Drakken’s planning something dumb for Thursday. A museum heist. Really cliché. Might be a good distraction from… all this.”
Shego melted back into the shadows of the building, leaving Kim alone in the courtyard. The throbbing in her body was a constant, painful rhythm. But a new, different kind of heat was building behind her eyes—not from tears, but from a sharp, focused anger. She had a date with a museum on Thursday. And for once, the thought of punching Drakken’s lights out felt incredibly, viscerally straightforward.