Chapter 25: Leashed and Lubricated
The leash arrived in a slim, discreet Amazon package addressed to Patricia. She opened it at the kitchen island while Ben poured coffee. It wasn’t the fuzzy pink novelty cuff from the basement. This was proper nylon webbing, one inch wide, a shocking, iridescent pink that shimmered under the fluorescents. The clasp was heavy-duty chrome.
“Finally,” she said, testing the clip’s satisfying click. “The other one was for practice. This is for official use.”
He stared at the dregs in the French press. His phone, face-up on the counter, showed another text from his dad. Your mother tried to call you three times this week. Everything OK? He flipped it over.
“Mixer tonight,” Patricia continued, coiling the leash into a neat loop. “Sigma Chi and Kappa Delta. Theme is ‘Neon Nights.’ This,” she held up the loop, “is my accessory. You’re my plus-one. Obviously.”
That night, she made him wear a plain black t-shirt and dark jeans. “You’re the background. The contrast.” She wore a sleek, neon green crop top and white shorts, her blonde hair in a high, severe ponytail. The leash looked intentional against her outfit, a piece of the ensemble.
The Sigma Chi house was a brutalist block of noise and strobing light. Music punched through the walls. Patricia clipped the leash to his collar—a simple leather band she’d insisted he wear—“for safety,” she’d said—with a firm, final snap. The weight of it was negligible, the symbolism a leaden anchor.
“Stay close,” she said, not looking back, and plunged into the crowd.
For a while, she just led him. The leash was slack, but its presence was a clarion announcement. Heads turned. Snickers surfaced like bubbles in boiling water. “Is that…?” “No way, look at Pat go.” A Sigma Chi brother, a hulking guy with a beard, high-fived Patricia. “Miller! Heard about the video. Legendary.”
“Just training,” she laughed, giving the leash a little tug. Ben stumbled a half-step forward.
“Hey Pat! Over here!” It was Sarah, the sister from the beer pong table, waving from a crowded couch surrounded by Sig brothers. She was flanked by two other Kappa Deltas: Chloe, an artistic type with black-rimmed glasses and a smirk, and Maya—a different Maya, petite and viciously cheerful.
Patricia navigated towards them, Ben in her wake. A puddle of something dark and sticky—cola and rum, maybe—glistened on the floor near their feet. Sarah, noticing it, then noticing Ben, grinned. She kicked off her platform sandal and dangled her foot over the spill. Her toenails were painted a chipped cobalt blue.
“Oops,” Sarah said, her voice sugary. “Made a mess. You’re on clean-up duty, right, Ben?”
Patricia gave the leash a slight, encouraging jerk. “You heard her.”
He lowered himself. The smell of spilled sugar and alcohol was overwhelming. Sarah’s foot hovered, waiting. He licked the sticky liquid from her sole, the taste synthetic and sweet. The webbing of her toes tasted of salt and lotion.
“Faster, footboy!” Chloe chimed in, sipping a seltzer. She was deep in conversation with a lanky Sigma Chi about a Basquiat exhibit, one hand gesturing, the other pointing casually at Ben. “He’s kinda meticulous, isn’t he? Like a weird, focused cat.”
Sarah giggled, her eyes scanning the room over Ben’s head, locking onto another brother. “He’s thorough. I’ll give him that.”
When he finished, Maya—the cheerful one—piped up. “My turn! But mine’s a challenge.” She had been eating cheese puffs. Her fingers, dusted with bright orange powder, now brushed against the bare foot of the brother sitting next to her. “Jake, your feet are probably gross from those dorm showers. Let’s see if he’s a purist.”
Jake, amused, tugged off his sock and shoved his bare foot toward Ben. It was pale, slightly damp. “Knock yourself out, man.”
Patricia leaned against the couch arm, watching with detached interest. “Broadening your palate, Ben. It’s educational.”
The taste was soap and sweat and something vaguely fungal. Ben gagged, his body recoiling instinctively.
“Ah-ah,” Patricia singsonged, pulling the leash taut, forcing his head back up. “Manners.”
He pressed his mouth to the arch, the skin cool and spongy. The brother, Jake, laughed and took a swig of his beer, his attention already returning to Maya. “You girls are brutal.”
“We’re innovators,” Chloe said, then turned back to her art bro. “So you’re saying the graffiti is inherently derivative of the street context, or is that the point?”
Patricia decided to circulate. She moved through the party, a glamorous explorer with her attached, silent specimen. She’d stop, chat with a group, the leash held loosely like a trainer with a well-behaved dog. Sometimes she’d loop it around a bedpost or a banister while she went to get a drink, leaving him standing there, a parked commodity.
Later, in the crowded kitchen, she tied the end of the leash to the handle of the overflowing stainless steel sink. “Wait,” she commanded, and joined a circle of Sig brothers playing a loud drinking game. Ben stood facing the sink, staring at the crusted ridges of the faucet. The chatter and music were a wall at his back.
He felt a tap on his shoulder. It was Chloe. She held her phone up, recording an Instagram Story. Her voice was a confidential, podcast-ready murmur close to his ear. “So here we have Exhibit A in behavioral conditioning. The subject is tethered in a high-stimulus environment but socially isolated. Note the tension in the shoulders.” She reached out and squeezed his trapezius muscle. “Classic stress response.” She panned the phone to Patricia, who was laughing, throwing her head back at something a brother said. “The alpha,” Chloe narrated, “is reinforcing social bonds, demonstrating that the subject’s utility does not require her direct engagement.” She stopped recording and smiled at Ben, a genuine, fascinated smile. “Fascinating, right? You’re like a living thesis.”
She wandered off. Ben closed his eyes. The noise became a singular, roaring hum.
The climax came on the crowded dance floor. The music was a thumping, mindless beat. Patricia, energized and slick with sweat, unclipped the leash from his collar. For a second, he felt a dizzying, terrifying sense of freedom. Then she dropped the coil into his hands.
“Hold this,” she said. “Don’t lose it.”
And then she turned and started dancing with a tall Sigma Chi, their bodies moving close. Ben stood frozen, the shimmering pink leash hanging from his fist like a severed umbilical cord. He was adrift in the sea of bodies, holding the symbol of his bondage while its architect moved freely away from him.
A brother bumped into him, sloshing beer on his shoes. “Watch it, leash-holder,” the guy slurred, not unkindly, before being swallowed by the crowd.
He saw Patricia’s ponytail whipping, her neon top glowing under the black lights. She was shouting something over the music, her smile wide and white. She wasn’t looking at him. She had forgotten him. The knowledge was a cold knife slipping between his ribs.
He was just the guy holding the leash. A piece of stagecraft that had served its purpose and been discarded mid-scene. The humiliation of its use was now replaced by the humiliation of its irrelevance.
The song segued into a slower, deeper track. The crowd tightened. Patricia and her dance partner swayed. Ben stood there, the nylon webbing digging into his clenched palm. He could leave. He could drop it and walk out. The exit was thirty feet away.
His feet didn’t move. His hand wouldn’t open. The exit was just a door. Beyond it was a silence where this leash, and the hand that held it, would mean nothing. And that meaningless silence, he realized with a clarity that hollowed him out, was more terrifying than any command Patricia could ever issue.
He tightened his grip. He waited.
The ranch dressing was a cold, cloying sludge between her toes. The vodka smelled like chemical flowers. Ben’s tongue moved mechanically, scraping against the soft skin of her arch, the taste of salt and sour cream and cheap liquor making his stomach turn. The handcuff bit into his wrist, the beer pong table solid and unyielding against his back.
“He’s actually not terrible at it,” Patricia mused, wiggling her toes against his mouth. She was perched on the edge of the table, a queen on a throne of cheap plywood and red plastic cups. A girl named Chloe, a strawberry blonde with sharp eyes, giggled and lowered herself onto his chest, her weight pushing the air from his lungs.
“Think he’s learned his lesson yet, Pat?” Chloe asked, rocking back slightly. Her jeans were rough against his neck.
“Doubt it.” Patricia took a sip from her cup. “Some dogs need constant reminding.”
Chloe leaned down, her hair a curtain around their faces. The music pounded through the floor. “Hey, Valedictorian,” she whispered, her breath sweet with mixed drink. “See that guy by the keg? The one in the salmon-colored shorts? That’s my boyfriend, Mark. He’s president of Sigma Chi. I’m going to go dance with him now. And you’re going to stay right here and be my footstool while I do.” She shifted, grinding her heel against his sternum before hopping off. “Hold him steady, Pat.”
Patricia adjusted her foot, planting it more firmly on his shoulder. “You heard her. Be useful.”
Ben watched, eyes stinging from the sweat and the humiliation, as Chloe sauntered over to the guy in salmon shorts. She said something, nodded back toward the table, and the guy laughed, a loud, braying sound that cut through the bass. He slid a hand possessively around Chloe’s waist as they started to move to the music. Chloe looked over her shoulder at Ben and blew him a kiss.
Then came Maya. Tall, with a dark braid and an athletic grace that mirrored Patricia’s. She held two shot glasses. “Pat says you’re thirsty,” she announced. She didn’t hand him a shot. She stood over him, her legs framing his head. “Open wide, pony boy.”
He hesitated. The metal bit deeper.
“Do it,” Patricia said, her voice devoid of its usual mocking lilt. It was flat. An order.
He opened his mouth. Maya poured the first shot, cheap tequila that burned a trail of fire down his throat and made him cough. Some of it dribbled down his chin. “Oops,” she said, not meaning it. The second shot followed before he could recover. This one went down harder, a knot of heat in his gut.
“Good boy,” Maya said. She then placed the empty glasses on his chest and sat on his face.
The world became denim and pressure and stifling heat. The noise of the party was muffled. He couldn’t breathe. He heard her voice, vibrating through her body. “You smell that, Ben? That’s cotton and victory. Two things you’ll never have.” She rocked forward, a casual, crushing motion. “Mark says you used to argue with him in Econ 302. Said you thought you were so smart.” She leaned back, allowing a gasp of air that tasted of fabric softener. “You’re not smart. You’re furniture.”
She stood up as abruptly as she’d sat. The sudden influx of light and sound was disorienting. His lungs burned.
A brunette named Jess appeared next, holding a tube of bright pink lipstick. “My turn.” She uncapped it. “Hold his head, Pat.”
Patricia’s hand fisted in his hair, yanking his head back against the table. Jess knelt, her face close to his. She smelled like vanilla and chlorine. With deliberate, artistic strokes, she applied the lipstick to his mouth, smearing it outside the lines, making a grotesque clown grin. “There. Perfect. Now you match your personality. Fake and messy.”
She then took a selfie, her cheek pressed against his, her face all bright smiles. “Hashtag, kiss of shame,” she giggled, typing rapidly. “The sisters are gonna love this.”
The procession continued. A girl used his thigh as a coaster, leaving a cold, wet ring on his singlet. Another made him recite the Kappa Delta creed while she fed him potato chips, shoving them into his painted mouth until he gagged. Each interaction was punctuated by glances across the room, by waved invitations to fraternity brothers who watched with beers in hand and grins of complicit understanding.
“Look how still he is for you, Becca,” a guy named Tyler from Phi Delt called out, slapping his friend on the back. “Maybe we should get one.”
“He’s custom-made,” Patricia replied, her voice carrying. “One of a kind.”
Becca, a petite girl with a pixie cut, was currently standing on his stomach, using his body as a step stool to reach a banner tacked to the ceiling. Her Converse sneakers dug into his ribs. “Thanks for the lift, Bench.” She adjusted the banner, ignoring his grunt of pain.
The climax came when Patricia finally unlocked the handcuff. His wrist was raw and bracelet. “Up,” she commanded.
He stood, his body aching, the world tilting slightly from the shots and the lack of air. The lipstick felt waxy and thick. A circle had formed around the beer pong table.
Patricia pointed to a fraternity brother, a huge lineman named Derek, who was leaning against the wall. “Derek. Come here.”
Derek pushed off the wall, smiling. Patricia turned to Ben. “You see Derek? He’s a communication major. He’s also going to give you a hug. And you’re going to say, ‘Thank you for the hug, sir. I don’t deserve it.’ And you’re going to mean it.”
Derek’s arms enveloped him, a bear hug that was less affection and more a display of crushing strength. It squeezed the remaining breath from Ben’s lungs. The smell of beer and cologne was overwhelming. The room watched, phones up.
Patricia’s eyes were on him, gleaming in the strobe light. “Say it.”
The words were ashes. “Thank you for the hug, sir,” Ben choked out, his face pressed into Derek’s massive shoulder. “I don’t deserve it.”
Derek released him with a laugh, giving him a pat on the cheek that was just shy of a slap. “Anytime, buddy.”
The bass from the speakers throbbed through the floorboards, a physical pulse that vibrated up through the metal leg of the beer pong table and into the cold steel of the handcuff. Ben’s wrist was already chafed, a raw, pink ring against his pale skin. He kept his eyes fixed on a warped floorboard, following its grain like a labyrinth with no exit.
Patricia’s foot, bare and smelling of cheap vodka and something sour, nudged his chin. “Eyes up, footrest. You’re on duty.”
He looked. The sorority house living room was a swirl of colored lights and moving bodies. A girl in a sequined top stumbled against the table, sending a plastic cup wobbling. She didn’t even look down at him.
“Oopsie,” Patricia sang, her voice cutting through the music. She was perched on the edge of a sagging couch, her other foot planted firmly on his shoulder. She held a red Solo cup in one hand, gesturing with it as she talked to a ring of her sisters. “So then Coach says, ‘Miller, your top game is relentless,’ and I just smiled because, I mean, duh. Right, Ben?”
Her toes wiggled against his jaw. A few of the girls giggled, their eyes flicking to him with a mixture of curiosity and distaste.
“Ben’s being quiet tonight,” one of them, a brunette named Chloe, said. She dipped a chip into a bowl of ranch dressing, taking a loud crunch. “Cat got your tongue, valedictorian?”
“He’s contemplative,” Patricia said, patting his head with her free hand like a dog. “Aren’t you? Thinking deep thoughts about leverage and failure.”
A dollop of creamy ranch, flecked with herbs, dropped from Chloe’s chip and landed with a soft plop on Patricia’s instep, oozing between her toes.
“Ew, gross, Chlo!” Patricia laughed, but she didn’t move her foot. She looked down at Ben, her expression one of theatrical pity. “Look at that. A mess. Clean it up.”
The command hung in the air, mixing with the smell of sweat and stale beer. The music switched to a heavier track. Ben felt the eyes of the circle on him. This was different from the gym, different from her quiet dorm room. This was a performance with a live, drunk audience.
He leaned forward, the chain of the cuff rattling. The ranch was cold and slick. He closed his eyes as his tongue made contact, the sharp tang of buttermilk and garlic flooding his mouth, mixed with the salt of her skin. He heard a chorus of “Oh my God!” and laughter. Someone snapped a photo, the flash a brief, white starburst against his eyelids.
“See?” Patricia announced. “Useful. He’s a multi-purpose tool.”
Chloe, emboldened, swirled another chip, this one dripping. She held it over Patricia’s foot. “What about this one?”
“Don’t waste good ranch,” Patricia said. She shifted, lifting her foot from his shoulder and pressing her sole directly against his face, grinding the dressing into his skin. “Lick it clean. Properly.”
He did. The humiliation was a cold, heavy stone in his gut, but beneath it, a stranger, emptier feeling was spreading. A sense of dissociation. The laughter became muffled, the lights blurred. He was just a thing performing a task.
“My turn,” said another sister, a tall girl with a ponytail. She’d been watching silently, a small, intent smile on her face. She held her own cup, clear liquid sloshing inside. “I spilled a little.”
She wasn’t lying. A trickle of vodka had run down the cup’s side and over her fingers. She reached down and casually dribbled what was left on her fingers between Patricia’s toes.
Patricia wiggled them. “Top shelf, I hope.”
“The best for your pet,” the girl said.
The vodka was a harsh, chemical burn after the ranch. It stung the tiny cuts on his lips from the chafing metal. He worked mechanically, his mind a blank, static screen.
“Alright, enough with the feet. He’s warmed up,” Patricia declared, swinging her legs off the couch. She stood, grabbing a half-empty bottle of water from the table. She unscrewed the cap and poured it slowly over his head. The water was shockingly cold, soaking his hair and shirt. “Gotta rinse off the appetizer before the main course.”
She unlocked the handcuff. The sudden freedom in his wrist felt alien, painful. “Stand up.”
He pushed himself up, his legs stiff. The room seemed to tilt.
“On your back. Here.” She pointed to a cleared space of floor in the center of the room, right in the traffic path between the kitchen and the dance area. The music was loud here, the beat invasive.
He lay down. The ceiling was stained with old water marks. A disco light spun, painting spirals across the plaster.
Patricia lowered herself, not onto his chest, but higher. She settled her weight over his face, her sweatpants-clad hips cradling his head, blocking out the light and most of the sound. The world shrunk to muffled bass, to the thick, humid scent of cotton and her. The heat was immediate, overwhelming.
“Taste that, valedictorian?” Her voice was directly above him, vibrating through her body into his skull. “That’s what real achievement smells like. It smells like sweat. It smells like winning.”
She began to move, a slow, grinding oscillation. The fabric rasped against his nose and mouth. He couldn’t breathe well. Each inhale was filtered through her, saturated with her. He turned his head to the side, gasping for a sliver of cooler air.
“Ah-ah,” she chided, shifting to recapture him. “Stay focused. This is your podium now.”
A new weight pressed down on his chest. Then another. Giggles, close by. Through the narrow tunnel of vision beside Patricia’s thigh, he saw the sneakers and bare feet of other girls. Chloe and her friend were sitting on him, using his ribcage as a bench. Their combined weight made breathing even harder. Spots danced in the darkness.
“Comfy, Ben?” Chloe asked, bouncing slightly.
He couldn’t answer. His mouth was full of fabric, his chest compressed. The sounds of the party—the shrieks, the shouts, the relentless music—faded into a distant roar. His own heartbeat was the loudest thing in the universe, a frantic drum against the pressure.
Patricia leaned forward, her voice dropping to a whisper meant only for him, a secret in the dark. “This is what you are now. This is all you are. Furniture.”
The girls on his chest were talking about a professor, about a party next weekend. Their conversation was normal, casual. He was just a piece of the environment. The realization was a final, quiet collapse inside him. The defiance, the anger, the burning shame—it all dissolved into a profound, exhausting nothing.
He went limp.
Patricia felt it. The tension finally bleeding out of him, a total surrender deeper than any tap-out. She smiled, a private, victorious curve of her lips he couldn’t see. She gave one final, deliberate grind against his face, marking the moment.
Then she stood up, brushing off her sweatpants. The cool air hit his wet, heated skin like a shock. Light and sound flooded back in, harsh and garish.
“Okay, I’m bored,” she announced to the room. “Who wants pizza?”
The girls dispersed, chatting, heading toward the kitchen. Ben lay on the floor, staring at the spinning light. People stepped over him. Someone spilled a beer near his hand, the foam fizzing on the wooden floor. He didn’t move. He just breathed, in and out, in and out, each breath a reminder that he was still, technically, alive.
From the kitchen doorway, Patricia glanced back. She saw him there, a discarded prop in the middle of the party. She pulled out her phone, took one last picture, and swiped to her messages. She typed a single line to an unsaved number: ‘Stage one complete. He’s broken.’
She put the phone away, grabbed a slice of pepperoni from a greasy box, and walked upstairs, the party swirling on without her, leaving him alone on the floor.