Chapter 7: Public Branding
The collar had been upgraded. The simple black leather was now stamped near the clasp with two bold, serif letters: DB. They were painted a cheap, shiny gold that caught the light. Mary had presented it that morning after unlocking the closet. “So people know,” she’d said, buckling it back around his throat. It felt heavier.
Now, the afternoon sun was a physical weight, heating the dark leather against his skin. The campus courtyard buzzed with the lazy energy between classes. Students lounged on benches, leaned against the brick walls, their laughter sharp and carefree in the warm air.
Mary held the leash, a six-foot length of nylon cord, wrapped loosely around her fist. She walked at a leisurely pace, forcing me to shuffle beside her.
“What’s with the leash, Mary?” a guy in a fraternity tee called out, grinning. “Get a new dog?”
Mary stopped, smiling warmly. “Something like that! This is Arthur. He’s my helper.”
A girl walking with the guy, a pretty blonde with a high ponytail, slowed to a stop. Her eyes swept over me, lingering with a mixture of curiosity and disgust. “What do the letters stand for?”
Mary gave the leash a little jerk, making me stumble. “Oh, this?” She tapped the gold letters with a fingernail. “DB. Stands for Douche Bag. It’s basically his job title.”
The guy laughed, not unkindly, just amused by the spectacle. “No shit? What’s he do?”
“Everything,” Mary said, her voice light and conversational. “He’s a cum-sucking, cunt-cleaning, cocksucker. A real all-purpose appliance. Saves us a fortune on toilet brushes and batteries.”
The blonde’s face froze, her smile tightening into something brittle. She looked at me not with pity, but with a kind of cold, anthropological revulsion. “Wow,” she said flatly. “Creative.”
“He’s very dedicated,” Mary said, and tugged the leash to move on.
They passed a group gathered under the stubborn oak tree. Arthur kept his head down, but he felt the stares like laser points on his skin. He heard the whispers, the choked laughs.
“Is that the kid from Sigma Pi?”
“I heard he lives in their basement.”
“No, man, I heard he's like some sort of human toilet.”
A giggle. “Ew, David, don’t be gross.”
“What? That’s what Sera Rossi told me!”
The commentary was a low, constant hum around him, a soundtrack to my shame. I was a walking joke, a meme made flesh. I just wanted to disappear.
Then I saw her.
Lynette Riggs was coming up the path from the library, a stack of books balanced in one arm, her long red hair a fiery cascade over her shoulder. She was laughing at something a friend had said, her green eyes crinkling. For a fractured second, it was just another day months ago, a day when I’d dream of finding the courage to say hello.
Her gaze swept the courtyard, landed on Mary, and then slid to over to me taking in the leash. The laughter died on her face. Her steps slowed. Recognition flickered—not of Arthur the person, but of Arthur the object. He saw it click. The pathetic pledge who’d lingered near her at a party once, who’d stared a little too long in Philosophy 101.
Mary stopped, preemptively. “Hey, Lynette.”
“Mary,” Lynette said, her voice cool. She adjusted her grip on her books. Her friend, a petite girl with gauges in her ears, stared openly.
“Just taking my personal douche bag for his walk,” Mary said cheerfully. “Get him some exercise.”
"Douche bag" she asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Yes, he's kind of the house bitch. Provides oral service for anybody that wants it. Guys or girls either one. He's actually pretty good at it." Mary said with a smile.
Lynette’s eyes raked over me. They seemed to see every humiliation, every degrading act of the past week, as if the memories were tattooed on his skin. Her lip curled, just slightly. Not in anger. In pure, unadulterated contempt.
My mouth went dry. Some desperate, broken part of me hoped for a flicker of empathy, for a shred of the kindness I’d imagined in her.
She took a step closer. The scent of her perfume—something clean and citrusy—cut through the smell of hot pavement and his own fear. She looked directly at me, her green eyes flat and hard.
“Eww, that's pathetic,” she said, the word clear and deliberate.
She shifted her books to one arm. With her free hand, she gathered a small amount of saliva in her mouth and, without breaking eye contact, she spat. It wasn’t a violent, angry shot. It was a dismissive, precise gesture. The warm, wet blob landed on his cheek and slid down to drip off his chin.
“Pathetic little douche bag,” she clarified, her tone conversational, as if correcting a minor fact.
She turned back to her friend, her smile returning as if she’d just swatted a fly. “Come on, we’re gonna be late.”
They walked away, their laughter starting up again, about something else entirely.
I stood frozen. The spit traced a cold, slick path down my skin. The world had narrowed to that single, evaporating spot of moisture. It was a baptism of a different kind. Any last, fragile fantasy of being saved, of being seen as human by someone like her, dissolved in the afternoon heat.
Mary watched me, a serene smile on her face. She leaned close, her voice a humid whisper in his ear. “See? They all know what you are. Even the pretty ones. Especially the pretty ones.” She used the edge of her hand to wipe the spit across his face, smearing it. “Now you wear it.”
The walk continued. Every class he was dragged past, every turned head, every whisper now carried Lynette’s verdict. Pathetic little douche bag. He heard it in the snicker of a guy holding a cafeteria tray. He saw it in the averted eyes of a girl from his Calculus section. He felt it in the weight of the sun and the gold letters on his collar.
By the time Mary led him back toward the sorority house, the courtyard’s dappled shadows had stretched and merged. The scent of overwatered petunias from a planter was cloyingly sweet, a direct assault on his senses. He walked mechanically, his mind a blank, white static. The shame hadn’t disappeared; it had simply been absorbed. It was in his bones now, in the rhythm of his heartbeat. It was a fact, as simple and unchangeable as the letters stamped into the leather around his throat.
Mary unlocked the side door to the Tri Delta kitchen. Before shoving me inside toward the waiting mop bucket, she patted my cheek, her fingers lingering near the corner of my mouth.
“Good walk,” she said. “We’ll do it again tomorrow. Maybe we’ll go by the frat house. Let your brothers see how useful you turned out to be.”
The door closed behind me, locking me back into the smell of bleach and decay. I stood in the silent kitchen, the ghost of Lynette’s spit still chilling his skin, the echo of her words the only thing left in his head. The narrative was set now, in stone and spit and gold-leaf. There was no other story left to tell.
There was no other story left to tell. I was just standing there in the kitchen, the phantom sensation of Lynette’s spit still tacky on my skin, when the doorbell rang. It was a shrill, demanding buzz that cut through the house’s quiet.
“Douche Bag!” Sera’s voice echoed from the front parlor. “Get the door! And it better not be a delivery guy you’re flashing.”
I moved mechanically, the dog bed in my closet flashing in my mind as a promised refuge I wouldn’t reach for hours. The main foyer was all polished wood and sorority crests, a world away from the basement’s leather and dust. I took a breath that hitched in my throat, straightened my posture out of ancient habit, and pulled the heavy oak door open.
Mark and Leroy from Sigma Pi stood on the porch, silhouetted by the evening string lights. They were both wearing letterman jackets, holding a case of cheap beer. Mark’s grin was immediate and wide.
“Whoa,” Leroy said, his eyes dropping to my neck. “The collar’s real. We heard but, damn.”
“Told you,” Mark chuckled, shoving past me into the foyer without an invitation. He looked me up and down. “So you’re, like, their full-time maid now? That’s the gig?”
“Something like that,” I mumbled, staring at the floorboards.
“We came to see Sera,” Leroy said, following Mark in and clapping a heavy hand on my shoulder. It wasn’t friendly. “But first, we gotta get the details, man. Campus is buzzing.”
They herded me into the corner of the foyer, near an umbrella stand. The citrus-vanilla air felt suffocating. Mark leaned in, his voice a conspiratorial stage whisper. “So Mary Johnson. You’re doing her?”
I could only manage a stiff, almost imperceptible nod. My glasses slid down my nose.
“Going down on her?” Leroy pressed, his expression a mask of fascinated disgust. “Dude. We wouldn’t touch that with a ten-foot pole. Not even at last call. Not even with your pole.”
Mark barked a laugh. “His pole! That’s good.” He got closer, his breath smelling of mint and cheap tobacco. “So come on. You gotta tell us. We’re brothers, right? For real, how did she taste?”
The question hung in the air, brutal and simple. I could feel the memory coating my tongue, a thick, sour film I could never scrub away. I saw the flickering lamplight on the basement ceiling, felt the coarse hair against my face, tasted the hours.
“Well?” Leroy prompted, smiling.
My voice, when it finally came, was a dry rustle. “She tasted… like salt.”
It was the only, terrible truth I could shape into a word.
Mark’s eyes lit up. He and Leroy exchanged a glance of pure, triumphant revelry. “Salt!” Mark crowed, throwing his head back with laughter. “Oh, that’s fucking perfect! Like sweat? Like ass? You gotta be more specific, artiste!”
“Like she didn’t wash,” I whispered, the admission tearing something final inside me.
Their laughter doubled, echoing off the high ceiling, a physical force that pushed me further into the wall. Leroy was wiping his eyes. “I’m gonna cry, that’s so gross. You’re a legend, man. A fucking pioneer of gross.”
“A saint,” Mark gasped between laughs. “A nasty, nasty saint. Okay. We’re done. We got what we came for. Go tell Sera her real company is here.”
They left me standing there, their laughter trailing them as they strode toward the parlor. I closed the front door slowly, the weight of it immense. The silence they left behind was different now. It was filled with the echo of their laughter, and the crystalline, horrifying knowledge that the story wasn’t just with the sisters anymore.
It was with everyone. My brothers had just made sure of it.