Chapter 9: Final Humiliation
Ben walked back to his dorm in a silence so complete it felt like a physical shell around him. The usual nighttime sounds of campus—laughter from open windows, the distant thump of bass, someone skateboarding on concrete—were just muffled vibrations against the glass. He kept seeing the preview image on her screen. His own face, eyes wide with strain and something uglier, something like terror, flattened against the mat under Patricia’s triumphant smirk.
He didn’t shower. He sat on the edge of his bed, the coarse weave of his jeans scraping against the still-damp sweat on his thighs. He stared at his phone, dark and inert on his desk. It was a grenade. He knew it. Any second, it would light up with Sean’s name, or worse, a series of escalating texts from his brother trying to make sense of what he’d seen.
He waited. The screen stayed black.
That was worse. The silence from home was a bottomless pit. Was Sean re-watching it? Had he shown their parents? Was he sitting in his room, his perception of his older brother, the unshakable one, crumbling into dust?
A dry, hacking sound escaped Ben. It wasn’t a sob. It was the noise of something internal breaking.
Patricia took a long, steamy shower in the athletes’ locker room, letting the hot water pummel her shoulders. A deep, settled satisfaction warmed her from the inside. It was better than any trophy. The physical win was a given. But the digital trophy, the captured moment of his surrender, the control over his private world—that was the real prize.
She dressed in clean, soft clothes, the mundane act feeling luxurious. Back in her single dorm, she scrolled through the video on her phone. She’d trimmed it perfectly. It started with Ben’s aggressive shot, made him look overconfident, then cut to her reversal, her dominance, the slow, inexorable squeeze. It ended on the clear, undeniable tap of his hand against her leg, followed by a three-second hold of his devastated face as he lay gasping. She’d added no music, no filter. The raw audio was the best part: his grunts, her calm, instructive voice, the final whimper.
She didn’t post it publicly. Not yet. That was a currency to be spent later. For now, she typed a message to Sean alone.
Hey! Here’s that highlight reel from tonight. Ben wanted you to see his progress. Tough match! He’s a resilient guy.
She attached the file and hit send. The beauty was in the plausible deniability. She was just the helpful rival, sharing sports footage. Ben’s humiliation was the subtext, a silent scream only he and his brother would hear in the video. Let them wrestle with that.
Morning light was a violation. Ben had slept in fitful bursts, tangled in sweaty sheets, jolting awake each time his phone buzzed. But the buzzes were just campus alerts, a group chat about a cancelled class. Nothing from Sean.
He moved through his morning routine like a ghost. In the dining hall, the clatter of trays and the smell of greasy eggs felt nauseatingly vivid. He saw a couple of guys from the wrestling team at a far table. One of them, Mark, glanced over, met Ben’s eyes for a second, then looked quickly back down at his phone, his expression unreadable. A cold trickle of dread seeped into Ben’s gut. Had they seen it? Had Sean shared it?
His first class was Strategy and Conflict, a senior seminar. He usually loved it. Today, the doorway felt like the mouth of a cave. He slid into a seat near the back just as the professor began.
Patricia was already there, front and center, of course. She was asking a probing question about game theory, her voice clear and confident. The professor nodded, engaging. Ben tried to focus on his notes, but the words blurred.
Then, from two rows ahead, he heard a muffled snicker. He looked up. A guy named Derek was leaning over, showing his phone to the girl next to him. The girl’s eyes widened, then flicked back toward Ben, a mixture of shock and pity before she looked away.
Ben’s blood turned to ice. It was out. It wasn’t just Sean.
He didn’t know how. Maybe Sean had shown a friend, swearing him to secrecy. Maybe Patricia had sent it to others with the same innocent caption. The vector didn’t matter. The infection was spreading.
The rest of the lecture passed in a roar of white noise. Ben felt every glance, real or imagined, like a physical touch. He was a specimen under glass. When the class ended, the students filed out in a chatter of conversations that now sounded like they were about him.
He lingered, pretending to pack his bag slowly, waiting for the room to clear.
“Rough night, Thompson?”
He turned. Patricia was leaning against the doorframe, her backpack slung over one shoulder, a sympathetic smile on her face. It was a masterpiece of public performance.
“What did you do?” The question came out flat, drained.
“Me?” She pushed off the frame and took a step closer, her voice dropping. “I sent your brother a sports video. That’s all. What he does with it… that’s on him. Or on you, I guess. For being such a compelling subject.”
She looked at him, her head tilted. “The tap was really clear, by the way. In the video. Cinematic, almost.”
He wanted to lunge at her. To wipe that smile off her face with his fists. But the memory of her weight, her control, the absolute physical certainty of her, froze him. And behind that, the newer, more terrifying fear: the digital evidence. It would live forever. A lunge now would just be another clip for her collection.
“See you at practice,” she said, her tone brightening again for an passing acquaintance. She turned and walked away, her ponytail swinging.
Ben stood alone in the empty classroom. The silence was different now. It wasn’t the silence of before. It was the silence after the bomb has gone off, when the ringing in your ears is the only sound left, and you’re just waiting for the rubble to settle to see what’s left of your life.
He pulled out his phone. His thumb hovered over Sean’s contact. He needed to explain, to say something, anything. But what? Sorry you saw me get destroyed? Sorry I’m not the guy you thought I was?
He put the phone away, unfinished.
The walk across the quad was an exercise in exposure. He felt hyper-visible. He kept his eyes on the cracked pavement, counting his steps. He passed a group of freshmen. One of them whispered something, and another giggled. He couldn’t hear the words. He didn’t need to.
His own phone buzzed in his pocket. A notification. It was a direct message on Instagram, from an account he didn’t know. Just a single emoji.
A dog.
He stopped walking, the world tilting. He stared at the little pixelated animal. It was just an emoji. It was everything.
He looked up, across the sea of students milling between classes. He saw her, on the steps of the library. Patricia was looking right at him, her phone in her hand. She wasn’t smiling. She just gave him a slow, considering look, as if assessing the durability of a tool. Then she turned and walked inside, swallowed by the dark entrance.
The game wasn’t over. The match in the gym had just been the opening move. He was still on the mat. And everyone was watching.
The whistle was a distant, shrill thing, lost under the roar of blood in Ben’s ears and the flat, hard press of the mat against his cheek. Patricia’s sneaker, still damp from her sweat, was a cold brand against his lips. The phone was angled down, a single unblinking eye capturing every twitch of shame on his face.
“Come on, Ben,” Patricia’s voice was a cheerful singsong, a horrifying contrast to the scene. “Sean’s typing something… looks like he’s speechless. Guess he never thought his role model would be such a natural at this.”
She eased the pressure, not out of mercy, but for better audio. “Now, tell everyone what you just did. Loud and clear.”
Ben’s throat closed. The gym air, thick with the smell of old sweat and cleaner, choked him. He could see Coach Davis’s shoes by the edge of the mat, motionless. No intervention was coming. This had sailed far past sportsmanship into something else entirely, and the coach, perhaps intrigued, perhaps shocked, was letting the current take them.
“I… kissed her shoe,” Ben whispered, the words scraping out.
“Pat’s shoe,” she corrected, nudging his jaw with her toe. “And you liked it, didn’t you? Tell them you liked it.”
A beat of silence. Then, a broken, “I liked it.”
Patricia beamed at the phone. “See? Progress.” She backed up, giving the camera a full view of Ben on his knees, head bowed, shoulders slumped in his singlet. “But a real victory needs a trophy. Don’t you think?”
She reached for her gym bag, rummaging with one hand while keeping the phone steady with the other. “Aha. Here we go.” She pulled out a small scrap of electric blue fabric. She shook it out, letting the camera focus. It was a thong, sleek and minuscule, with the word “VICTORY” embroidered in silver thread across the front.
Ben’s eyes widened. “No. Pat, come on, that’s not—”
“Not what?” she interrupted, her tone all mock innocence. “Not part of the match? The match is over, Ben. This is the victory lap. Or should I say, the victory strap?” She giggled at her own joke. “Now, hold still for the crown.”
He flinched as she approached, but movement felt impossible, a surrender written deep into his muscles. She didn’t force it over his head. She folded it neatly, almost reverently, and then laid it across his face like a blindfold, the fabric covering his eyes and nose. The scent was immediate—laundry detergent, a faint, faded perfume, and underneath, the intimate, musky truth of her. It was overwhelming. He jerked his head back, but her hand was on the back of his neck, firm and unyielding.
“Breathe it in, champ,” she murmured, leaning close so only he and the microphone could hear. “That’s the smell of you losing. Really deep, now.”
He inhaled, a shuddering gasp that filled his lungs with her. Humiliation burned hotter than any fatigue.
“Good boy,” she cooed, patting his cheek through the fabric. She stepped back, framing the shot. Ben on his knees, the blue victory thong stark against his flushed skin. “Alright, Instagram. Moment of truth. Ben, what are you?”
He shook his head, a weak, pathetic motion.
“The audience is waiting. Sean’s waiting. What are you?”
A tear, traitorous and hot, seeped from under the fabric. “I’m… Patricia’s…”
“Louder. For the people in the back.”
“I’m Patricia’s bitch.” The words left him, hollow and dead.
“Again! And make it sound like you mean it!”
“I’m Patricia’s bitch!” he shouted, the sound raw and tearing from his throat.
The live stream chat on her phone exploded with fire emojis and crying-laughing faces. The viewer count ticked up—500, 700, over a thousand.
“Outstanding!” Patricia cheered. “But you know what bitches do? They perform. They do tricks. So, let’s hear it. Bark for them.”
Ben froze. The fabric on his face, the smell, the echoing silence of the gym waiting for his next degradation—it all coalesced into a single, impossible point of no return. His pride, already shattered, now felt ground to dust.
Patricia sighed, a theatrical sound of disappointment. She walked over, her shadow falling over him. She placed a hand on top of his head, fingers tangling in his sweat-damp hair. Then she guided his face, firmly, towards her raised arm. She pulled the thong down just enough to expose his nose and mouth, then pressed his face into the hollow of her armpit, still slick from their match. The scent here was primal, acrid, a potent mix of salt and effort and utter dominance.
“Smell it,” she commanded, her voice losing its light-hearted edge, becoming pure steel. “That’s my win. Now bark.”
Trapped in the dark, salty heat of her, his last resistance melted. A small, choked sound escaped him.
“Louder.”
He took a ragged breath, filled with her. “Woof.”
“Again!”
“Woof! Woof!”
The barks grew louder, more desperate, echoing in the vast space. Each one felt like a piece of his old self being torn away and offered up to the laughing void of the internet. Patricia kept his face buried, her grip unrelenting, a smile of pure, unadulterated triumph on her lips as she watched the hearts and comments flood her screen.
Finally, she released him. He sagged forward, gasping for clean air, the thong slipping down to hang absurdly around his neck like a brutalist necklace. Patricia squatted down, bringing the phone close to his devastated face.
“And that, everyone,” she said, her voice warm and victorious, “is how you settle a rivalry. Any questions?” She winked at the camera, then ended the stream.
The sudden silence was deafening. She stood, peeling the thong from his neck and tossing it back in her bag with a casual flick of her wrist.