Chapter 13: Hallway Humiliation Parade
The transition from the gym’s echo to the dorm’s fluorescent hum was a descent into a different kind of arena. Sunlight gave way to the sterile, shadowless light of the hallway, reflecting off polished linoleum. The belt was not tight around Ben’s neck, but its presence was an anchor, a tether to the impossible reality he was now living. He could feel the cool air of the air conditioning on the damp patches of his face.
His knees ached already. The floor was unforgiving.
A few curious heads popped out of doorways, drawn by the murmur of the crowd trailing behind them. Phone cameras were raised, screens glowing like rectangular, unblinking eyes.
Patricia walked with a loose, easy gait, the end of the belt coiled casually in her fist. She didn’t look back. She narrated.
“Make way, make way,” she called out, her voice bright and conversational, as if leading a campus tour. “Special delivery. One defeated rival, slightly used. Formerly known for his arrogant opinions in political science.”
A giggle came from an open doorway. Ben kept his eyes fixed on the geometric pattern of the floor tiles, counting them. One. Two.
She stopped abruptly before the first open door. Ben halted, the leather going taut. His nose almost brushed the toe of her sneaker.
“Hey, Sam! Look what I caught,” Patricia said cheerfully to the guy in the doorway, a lanky engineering student Ben vaguely recognized. Sam’s mouth hung open, a chip halfway to his lips.
“Is that… Thompson?” Sam asked, his voice a mixture of disbelief and fascination.
“It was,” Patricia said, leaning a shoulder against the doorframe. “Now it’s my new pet. Watch.” She gave the belt a sharp, downward tug. “Ben. Say hello to Sam.”
Heat flooded Ben’s face. His throat closed. The silence stretched, thick and suffocating.
Patricia sighed, a performative sound of disappointment. “See, this is the problem. Bad pet.” She tugged again, harder. The pressure on his neck wasn’t dangerous, just inescapably commanding. “We practiced this. You remember the sound from the gym, don’t you? Let’s hear it.”
From behind them, someone in the crowd muttered, “Do it, man.” Another voice, lighter, said, “This is messed up.”
Ben’s lungs burned. He wasn’t breathing. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. It wasn’t stubbornness anymore. It was a physical block, his entire being rebelling against the performance.
Patricia dropped into a crouch beside him, suddenly at his eye level. Her expression was one of exaggerated patience. “That biochemistry final we tied on? You know Professor Aldridge gave you the higher grade on the written portion because he liked your formatting.” She spoke softly, just for him, her words a scalpel. “This is just formatting, Ben. Make the right noise.”
She yanked the leash sideways. His head jerked.
A sound tore from him—a choked, ragged cough.
“Closer,” she murmured, her eyes gleaming. “You can do better than that.”
He closed his eyes. The darkness was no escape. He saw the mat, tasted the salt, heard the chant. The last frayed thread of resistance snapped.
A short, sharp, desperate noise burst from his throat. A bark.
Patricia’s smile was radiant. She stood up, addressing Sam and the growing audience. “There it is! That’s the sound of a 96% on a biology quiz admitting it’s actually a foot-licker. Good boy.”
She didn’t wait for a reaction. She started walking again, forcing Ben to scramble on hands and knees to keep up. The procession moved down the hall. Every open door was a new stage.
“Bark for history,” she commanded at the next one, where two wide-eyed freshmen peeked out. He did, the sound becoming less forced, more hollow.
“Louder for poli-sci! Let ’em hear!” she directed, her voice rising with gleeful theatrics. He complied, the barks now automatic, a mechanical response to the tug of the leash. Each one carved a little more of him out and flung it into the laughing, gasping, recording void.
She was a maestro of degradation. “That’s my honors student!” she’d crow after a particularly loud one. “He used to argue about Keynesian economics. Now he just takes commands. Much easier, right?”
The hallway seemed to stretch for miles. The crowd was thinning, some peeling off, satiated or uncomfortable, but new faces always appeared ahead. The digital eyes of the phones never left him. He focused on the movement: left hand, right knee, right hand, left knee. A primitive, crawling rhythm.
At the intersection of two hallways, near the communal bathrooms, she stopped. The audience was a semi-circle around them. She let the leash go slack, surveying her work.
Ben knelt, head bowed, breathing hard. His palms were red and stinging. His sweat had cooled, leaving him clammy. The initial storm of shame had passed, leaving a numb, gray flatness in its wake. The barks were just noises now. They meant nothing.
Patricia fished her phone from her pocket. She swiped, tapped, then held it up for the crowd to see. It was a video, playing silently. Ben recognized the angle—from the bleachers in the wrestling gym. He saw himself on his back, her form descending, the world going dark.
“A memento,” she announced. Then she turned the phone toward Ben. “Look.”
He didn’t want to. His gaze remained fixed on the floor.
She crouched again, shoving the screen into his line of sight. He saw the moment of impact, the helpless flailing of his own limbs, the utter totality of the smothering. It was worse than the memory. It was objective, undeniable proof.
“That’s you,” she said, her voice dropping to a conversational, almost intimate tone. “That’s who you are now. This?” She gestured vaguely at the hallway, the leash. “This is just the walk home from where that happened.”
She stood up, putting her phone away. She held the belt with both hands now, like reins. “Campus loop’s cancelled. I think the message has been received.” She addressed the spectators. “Show’s over, folks. He’s got homework. So do you.”
A few disappointed murmurs, but the crowd began to disperse, the spell broken. Conversations started up again, normal traffic in the hallway resuming around the still, silent tableau of Patricia and her conquered rival.
She didn’t lead him further. She simply unclipped the end of the belt from the buckle, releasing it from around his neck. The leather slithered away, pooling on the floor beside his knee.