Chapter 8: Academic Discipline
Clara’s essay was a masterpiece of duplicity. It earned an A, with “Provocative and nuanced—see me” scribbled in red in the margin. The summons came not as a note, but as a quiet word after class, Vivian’s hand briefly resting on Clara’s shoulder, the heat of it bleeding through her cotton shirt. “My study. Four o’clock.”
The study was in the older wing of the English building, a room untouched by modern renovation. Sunlight streamed through leaded glass windows, illuminating dust motes dancing over piles of books. The air smelled of polish, parchment, and something faintly metallic. Vivian stood by the grand desk, looking every bit the scholar in a tweed skirt and cream blouse.
“Where’s Rowan?” Clara asked, her voice echoing slightly in the high-ceilinged room.
“She’ll be along,” Vivian said, her smile not reaching her eyes. “She has a role to play today. As do you.” She opened a desk drawer, removing a small, egg-shaped silicone device and a slim black remote. “We’re discussing the male gaze and the performance of femininity today. A graduate student, Mark, is coming for a tutorial at four-fifteen. He’s painfully earnest. He’ll be sitting right there.” She pointed to the burgundy velvet armchair, positioned directly in front of the desk.
Clara’s stomach tightened. “And we’ll be where?”
“Under here.” Vivian tapped the vast expanse of polished mahogany. The desk was a fortress, its front panel a solid sheet of wood that reached nearly to the floor, save for a footwell of shadowy space. “Rowan will be my… visual aid. A study in suppressed expression.”
The door opened silently, and Rowan slipped in. She looked at the egg in Vivian’s hand, then at the dark space beneath the desk. Her face was pale, a canvas of quiet dread.
“Lie down,” Vivian instructed, her tone clinical. Rowan knelt, then shuffled on her back into the footwell, disappearing from the knees up. Vivian followed, crouching gracefully. Clara heard the rustle of fabric, a sharp intake of breath from Rowan, and a low, buzzing hum that started, then faded to silence.
Vivian emerged, brushing her skirt. “Lubricated and inserted. The remote has three settings.” She placed it beside a hefty tome on her desk blotter. “Clara, you will join her. Your task is to keep her quiet. And to keep her on the edge. Use your mouth. When I press the button, you follow its rhythm. Understand?”
“He’ll hear,” Clara whispered, horrified.
“The door will be slightly ajar. He’ll be nervous, eager to impress. He will hear nothing but the sound of his own voice and mine. The human capacity for selective attention is profound.” Vivian checked her watch. “Get under.”
Clara crawled into the dark, dusty space. It was close, warm. Rowan was spread-eagle, her wrists and ankles secured with soft leather cuffs to the desk’s inner legs. Her skirt was bunched at her waist, her thighs glistening. The faint outline of the egg was visible inside her, a subtle, obscene bulge. Her eyes were wide, staring at the wood grain inches from her face.
A knock at the study door. Clara flinched.
“Come in, Mark,” Vivian called, her voice shifting seamlessly to its warm, lecturing tone.
The door creaked. Shoes shuffled on the rug. “Professor Holloway, thank you for seeing me.”
“Of course. Sit, please. Your questions on Laura Mulvey were quite insightful.”
The burgundy chair groaned as Mark sat down. His feet, in scuffed brown loafers, came into Clara’s narrow view, less than two feet from Rowan’s bound ankles. The smell of his cheap cologne drifted down.
Vivian began talking, her voice a polished stream of theoretical language. “The pleasure in looking is split between active male and passive female. The woman’s body, stylized and fragmented, speaks to a silent void…”
A low buzz vibrated the air between them. Rowan jerked. The egg deep inside her clicked to life. Clara saw the muscles in her abdomen clench. A helpless, wet sound caught in Rowan’s throat.
Keep her quiet.
Clara moved, pressing her face between Rowan’s thighs. She licked a broad stripe through Rowan’s slickness, tasting salt and silicone. Rowan bucked, her hip brushing Clara’s cheek. Clara clamped her hands on Rowan’s hips, pinning her down, and fastened her mouth over Rowan’s clit.
The buzzing intensified. Clara sucked in time with the pulses, a filthy, rhythmic counterpoint to Vivian’s articulate discourse above.
“…the male protagonist projects his look onto the female figure, aligning the audience with his power…”
Rowan was trembling, a fine, constant shake. Her breath came in sharp, choked huffs through her nose. Clara worked her tongue, lapping and circling, feeling the little nub swell and harden. She could feel the vibration transmitting through Rowan’s flesh into her own mouth. Every time the pitch of the buzz changed, she adjusted her pressure.
“An interesting point, Mark,” Vivian said, her voice calm. “But consider the potential for subversion within the very framework of the gaze. What if the object knows it is being objectified? What if it performs its objecthood with a kind of… deliberate excess?”
As she said “excess,” the remote clicked again. The buzz became a violent, sustained thrum. Rowan’s body went rigid, a silent scream tearing through her. Clara doubled her efforts, fucking Rowan with her tongue, plunging deep, then returning to flick wildly at her clit. She tasted the sharp tang of Rowan’s impending orgasm.
Mark’s feet shifted. “You mean, like, a weaponization of the stereotype?”
“Precisely.” Vivian’s chair squeaked slightly. She was moving. Clara imagined her hand, resting casually near the remote. “The performance becomes a mask, behind which actual agency may hide. Or fester.”
The vibration stopped abruptly. The sudden silence under the desk was deafening. Rowan shuddered, a wave of unfinished tension racking her. A thin whine escaped her clenched teeth. Clara didn’t let up, licking and sucking, trying to push her over the edge without the machine’s help.
“That’s… that’s really fascinating, Professor,” Mark said, his voice tinged with the excitement of a student who believes he’s keeping up. “I’ll have to rethink my seminar paper.”
“Do. I’ll look forward to reading it.” The dismissal was gentle. “Let’s continue this next week.”
“Yes. Thank you.”
The chair scraped. The loafers walked away. The door clicked shut.
Silence.
Then, the buzzing returned, a brutal, maximum setting roar. Vivian had held the button down.
It was too much. Rowan came with a violent, seismic intensity, her cunt pulsing around the egg, a gush of fluid hitting Clara’s chin. Her bound limbs strained against the leather, a long, ragged moan finally breaking free now that the audience was gone.
The buzzing cut off.
Vivian’s knees appeared as she crouched. She looked under the desk, her expression one of cool appraisal. Rowan was spent, weeping silently, tears cutting tracks through the dust on her temples. Clara pulled back, wiping her mouth, the taste of Rowan and accomplishment and degradation thick on her tongue.
“Good,” Vivian said, as if rating a well-executed thesis defense. She unchained Rowan’s ankles and wrists with efficient tugs. Rowan curled onto her side, coughing softly.
Clara crawled out, standing on shaky legs. Vivian was already back at her desk, making a note in a ledger. “You may use the adjacent washroom to clean up.”
In the small, tiled bathroom, Clara ran the sink. Rowan stood at the toilet, expelling the egg with a shudder. They washed in silence. Clara met Rowan’s eyes in the mirror. The haunted look was gone, replaced by a flat, empty coldness.
“She’s not lying,” Rowan said, her voice scraped raw. “She is the servant. But not to the moment.” She turned, leaning close, her breath ghosting over Clara’s ear. “She’s a servant to the need to do this. To prove she can. It’s a hungry thing. And it’s eating her just like it’s eating us.”
They left the study separately. Clara walked the long corridor, the theoretical jargon—the gaze, the performance, the object—echoing in her head, now stripped of all academic pretense. It was just mechanics. Power and flesh. Vivian was a brilliant director, but Rowan was right. The hunger in her eyes wasn’t for them. It was for the control itself.
Clara didn’t go back to her dorm. She went to the library, to the darkest, quietest carrel in the stacks. She opened a fresh notebook. Not for an essay. She began to write down everything she remembered. The silk scarves. The mirrors. The remote. The sounds. The quotes. She recorded it all with a cold, precise detail.
She was no longer just a participant in the research. She was becoming the archivist. And an archivist, she realized, holding the pen in a white-knuckled grip, ultimately controls the narrative.