Chapter 7: Grading on a Curve
The transformation was not the same as in the boiler room. It lacked the initial shock of rusted pipes and violent steam. Here, under the cold, sterile light of the classroom, it felt medical, invasive—a dissection of his former life. Lewis was pinned, anatomically, by the creature Professor Rygell had become. Her form was a landscape of emerald muscle, heaving and hot against him. His back was a roadmap of splinters from the brutalized oak desk, and a coppery taste filled his mouth where her kiss had split his lip. Yet, a primal, undeniable thread of arousal was woven tightly through the terror, pulling him deeper into a situation his mind could not yet label.
“You see?” she rumbled, the words vibrating from her chest into his. Her voice was like boulders grinding together, yet the cadence was hers, the darkly amused professor still present behind the burning black eyes. Her hips moved, not with the frenzied hunger of before, but with a deliberate, testing pressure. He was still inside her, and the sensation was a bizarre fusion of velvet warmth and terrifying, muscular constriction. It was like being held by a living, breathing vise. “A deficient analysis has consequences, Lewis. Real-world applications.”
He tried to speak, but all that came out was a choked gasp. His hands, trapped against the slabs of her pectorals, flexed uselessly.
“Breathe,” she commanded, and it sounded less like a suggestion and more like a biological directive. He sucked in a ragged breath, the air thick with chalk dust and the sharp, clean ozone of her transformation. Her skin smelled like crushed juniper and hot stone.
She leaned closer, her massive shadow blotting out the flickering ceiling lights. “The boiler room was… reactive. An emotional release. Unplanned. This,” she emphasized with a slow, deliberate roll of her hips that made his vision swim, “is pedagogy. You failed to grasp the subtext of my last three lectures. You wrote a surface-level essay on societal power structures without acknowledging the biological imperatives that underpin them. So I’m providing a… tactile review session.”
The absurdity of it crashed over him. “A review session?” he finally managed, his voice cracking. “You’re— you’re crushing the Dean’s antique desk.”
She glanced down at the wreckage beneath them, the carved legs splayed outward, the center sagging where her weight had compacted it. A low, terrifying chuckle escaped her. “A tangible metaphor for institutional decay. Focus, Lewis.”
Her movements became less measured, a rhythmic undulation that was impossible to resist. The fear began to mutate, not into comfort, but into a frantic, adaptive kind of acceptance. His body, traitorously, responded. His fingers, of their own volition, traced the impossible cords of muscle along her sides, feeling the power thrumming beneath the sleek skin. It was terrifying. It was the most electrifying thing he had ever felt.
“I reread your essay last night,” she growled, her breath hot on his ear. “Page three. Your assertion that charisma is a learned social performance. You called it a ‘soft power tool.’” Her grip on his hips tightened, threatening to bruise bone. “Is this soft?”
“No,” he hissed, arching against her.“Correct. This is the substrate. The engine underneath the performance. You were analyzing the costume and missing the monster in the wardrobe.” Her pace quickened. The desk groaned a final, splintering protest. The squeak of her green skin against the varnished wood was a lewd, continuous soundtrack. “Do you understand the assignment now?”
He was beyond coherent thought. The world had narrowed to the classroom, to the creature atop him, to the blindingly intense friction building at his core. The previous encounter in the boiler room had been a storm—this was the flood after, deliberate, inescapable, reshaping everything in its path. He could only nod, a frantic jerk of his head.
A genuine smile, vast and toothy, spread across her face. “Good.”
Her control snapped.
The final, measured thrusts gave way to an avalanche of motion. She drove into him, each impact jarring his spine, cracking the desk’s frame into kindling. The blackboard behind her rattled on its rails. Her roars were no longer words, just raw, expressive sound that shook the insulated panels of the drop ceiling. Lewis cried out, the sound swallowed by her enormity. His climax was less a wave than a detonation, wrenching through him with a force that left him seeing white starbursts behind his eyelids.
He went limp, a puppet with its strings cut, panting into the hollow of her collarbone.
The silence that followed was profound, broken only by the dying hum of the fluorescents and the ping of cooling metal from the demolished desk frame. The massive weight on top of him began to change. He felt it as a softening, a retreating tide. The immense pressure around him and within him ebbed. The vibrant green faded from her skin like a receding blush, leaving the familiar, pale olive tone he knew from class. The formidable musculature melted away, leaving the fit, toned form of Professor Rygell, now naked and slick with sweat, straddling him in the ruins of furniture.
She shuddered once, a full-body tremor, then pushed herself up onto her elbows. Her black hair was a mess, stuck to her damp forehead and temples. Her eyes were human again, dark and impossibly sharp, scanning his face with an unnerving clinical focus.
“Well?” she asked, her voice her own, though slightly hoarse. She sounded genuinely curious, like she’d just conducted a fascinating lab experiment. “Clarity achieved?”
Lewis lay broken beneath her, physically spent, emotionally scrambled. The evidence of the “review session” was cooling on his stomach and the wrecked wood. He stared up at the acoustic-tiled ceiling, at the familiar water stain shaped like a continent he’d stared at during boring lectures. Nothing was familiar anymore.
“I…” he started, then stopped. He finally looked at her. “What happens Monday? In class?”
She raised an eyebrow, then a slow, completely human smile touched her lips. It was more unsettling than any of her growls. She shifted, moving off him with a wince—the transformation clearly took its toll on her too, leaving her movements slightly stiff. She stood amid the debris, unabashed, and began gathering the shreds of her clothing. The blouse was a lost cause.
“On Monday,” she said, pulling on her slacks and buttoning them over her hips, “we discuss Foucault’s conception of the body as a site of power. I expect your contributions to be significantly more insightful.” She located her bra, looked at its twisted state, and tossed it into the trash can by her desk with a sigh. “And you’ll be writing a make-up essay. On applied phenomenology.”
She found her jacket, which had survived draped over her chair, and slipped it on, leaving it open. She looked, in that moment, like she’d just survived a minor traffic accident—disheveled, but collected.
Lewis slowly, painfully, sat up. His clothes were a mess, torn and stained. “And… this?” He gestured weakly at the destroyed desk, at himself, at the entire incomprehensible situation.
Professor Rygell walked to the classroom door, her heels crunching on a piece of splintered oak. She unlocked it with a definitive click.
“This,” she said, turning back. Her gaze was unreadable. “This is office hours. The only difference is, the door was locked.” She opened the door to the empty, silent hallway. The institutional clock ticked audibly from the wall. “Now clean yourself up. The custodians start their rounds in twenty minutes. I’d prefer not to have to explain why my classroom looks like a bear fight.”
She stepped out, the sound of her heels echoing down the linoleum hall before fading away.
Lewis sat alone in the ruin. He looked at the deep, parallel grooves her nails had carved into the oak. He touched his split lip. He smelled her on his skin. Foucault on Monday. Applied phenomenology.
He started to laugh, a thin, hysterical sound that bounced off the silent walls. He didn’t stop until his sides ached.