William Benton was odd. Or perhaps not. Perhaps he was exactly what every too-smart child in an American high-school turns into eventually. A bored, disruptive rebel, too ready to cause trouble just for the sake of seeing something interesting happen in a world where all was dull and predictable.
Ring!
“William, stay after class,” Ms. Parkson said. “I want a word with you.”
William pulled a novel from his pack and opened it mid-way, finding his place purely by the feel of the binding.
“You’re in trouble,” Harry Smythe sing-songed as he passed.
“Shove it douche-bag,” William muttered under his breath and began rapidly scanning and turning pages.
At half Judith Parkson’s age of thirty-four, William was a few inches taller and almost at his full growth. Brown curly hair over brown eyes. Thin yet muscular. Not your average geek. He competed on the swim team. Not a star athlete by any means, but not the frail kid who spent all of his time sitting in front of a computer or around a table throwing dice pretending to be an elven warrior-mage.
Judith watched William and William ignored her watching him. Several minutes later, the classroom was empty. “Follow me and bring your things,” Judith said.
She stood and took up her coat, purse, and brief-case. She exited the room, crossed the empty hall. It was the last class of the day and the last day of the week before spring break. The school was quickly turning into a quiet deserted spot suitable for the set of a slasher flick.
William pointedly finished the chapter, slipped the novel into his pack, and draped his long black coat around his shoulders as he stood to follow. He knew by the sound of her steps that she’d gone into the lounge across the hall. When he pushed the door open he found her sitting at the far end of the long table, two stacks of papers on the desk before her. The shorter pile was ‘already graded’ and the larger was ‘still to be graded.’
Perhaps Judith Parkson was odd, too. The earrings dangling from her pierced lobes were real gold and pearls. Her blouse was silk, her skirt was cashmere, and the shoes on her feet — with their just-over-sensibly high heels — were designer. The marriage hadn’t been kind to Doctor Parkson, but the divorce had been. Add that to the money she inherited on the death of her mother and you didn’t quite get independently wealthy, but you did get independent.
After the divorce, she’d vowed to finish and publish her paper on Quantum Super-Gravity, but something was wrong in the math and she couldn’t find what. She didn’t need the job teaching high-school Physics, but it made her feel less a failure, and at this point in her life, that was important. William irked her. She wasn’t sure if it was him wasting his potential or that she envied his take-no-prisoners independence.
“Did you get caught up watching American Idol last night? Is that why you couldn’t be bothered to do the homework I assigned?” Judith asked.
William snorted and said derisively, “Please.”
“Why then?” she asked more softly now.
“Look Doc,” he said, putting his pack on a chair and draping his coat over it. As he stalked down the length of the table toward her, Judith noticed — not for the first time — that everything William wore was black. It wasn’t goth, punk or emo. There was none of the piercings or make-up that would suggest that. His hair was cut short and plain, and the curl was natural. There was no hair on his face and no shadow either. He probably didn’t shave, and if he had facial hair, he had some non-standard way of dealing with it. There were no logos on anything he wore.
He’s not making a statement, Judith realized. His clothing is just … practical. But why black?
“Look Doc,” he repeated, pulling a food-bar from one bulging thigh pocket. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate what you’re trying to do.” He sat in the chair next to her, unclipped a tool from the key ring on his belt, and slit the package open. He broke the bar in half and offered her the untouched end still in the wrapper. “It’s that my tolerance for boredom is just too low. If I always did all the things that teachers assigned, I’d have slit my wrists long ago. Think of it as self-preservation,” he said, taking a bite from his half of the bar.
Judith noticed then that William had done something students never do. Students always maintained their distance, especially if there was any hint that they were in trouble. But William had closed that distance. So close in fact, that she could feel the warmth of his thigh under the table close to hers. Not touching, but almost.
Is he making a pass? Nothing in his body language suggested that. There was something unusual in his presence though. Something all too confident and self-assured.
“You know I know the material,” he said. “Don’t I always ace your tests?”
That was true. And even more, he had a tendency to solve problems using techniques that were novel. He didn’t just apply what came out of the book or her lecture. He used advanced techniques and derived unusual approaches to problems. “But since the homework is forty percent of your grade, you’re only pulling a D. You could do better.”
He laughed. “I appreciate your concern, Doc. I really do. But I have a 2350 SAT score. Do you really think the colleges are going to give a crap if I get a D in high-school Physics?”
She knew his SAT was high. His other teachers had been talking about it. She hadn’t realized it was that high. “Okay. So you don’t like Idol. What do you watch?”
“TV is a waste of time. If I need to veg, I put on a DVD. Usually, I’m much to busy even for that.”
“Busy with what?” Judith asked.
William looked at her, hard. “Look Doc, you’re a nice lady. You think you want to know, but, really, you don’t,” he said, shaking his head.
Now Judith was more than curious, but there was something in his manner and in what he said that made her want to just walk away from that feeling. She couldn’t though. “I do want to know. Really. I do.”
“Remember what curiosity did to the cat,” he said with a chuckle, then paused looking at her. “You really want to know, but do I really want you to know? Hmmm …”
The little, crooked half-smile he wore infuriated Judith. Keep your stupid secret! she thought and was about to send him away.
“I won’t tell you,” he said, “but I will show you if you agree that for five minutes, anything goes. Do you agree?”
“What do you mean, anything?”
“No,” he said, walking toward the door and grabbing his coat and pack as he passed.
“Wait!” she hissed. “I …”
A knock at the door interrupted what she was saying. “Doctor Parkson?” a man’s voice said.
“Get rid of him,” William whispered and slipped into the storage room behind the lounge.
“Yes, Stan. Come in.”
The door opened. “I guess you’re the last one on the floor,” Stan the security guard said. “I’m locking up now.”
“All right. I’m going to finish grading these” — she gestured to the stacks of papers — “then I’ll have the whole break free.”
“Sounds good. See you after.”
Stan shut the door and his steps faded into the distance.
William emerged from the storage room. “So what’s it going to be? My way, or I hit the highway.”
What could happen in five minutes? Judith wondered, but there was a knot of apprehension in her stomach. “Okay,” she said, but there was a hint of question on the tail of that short sentence.
“Okay what?” William snapped, but he was smiling.
“Okay. For five minutes anything goes. When does the five minutes start?”
“One moment,” he said, opening his pack and pulling something up from the bottom toward the top without revealing what it was. He took his phone, accessed the timer, set for five minutes, and placed it on the table in front of her. “It starts when you press start.”
She looked down at the phone, looked up at William, then back at the phone. Judith pressed the button.
“Stand up,” William said, taking something from his pack. When she stood and turned to face him, she could see that the something was a length of red rope. He looped the middle around the back of her neck.
“No!” she said, and when he wrapped the rope across the front of her throat, she hooked her thumbs under it.
“Good. That will keep it from getting too tight.”
“Stop!”
“Anything goes. You agreed,” he scolded as he passed the rope around her neck several more times.
“But …”
“Shhh!” he hissed. He took the ends of the rope, one at a time, and fed them under the loops, one from the top and down, the other from the bottom and up. He cinched the retaining loops tight and then put a knot in the two free ends making a loop about a foot and a half long in the leash on the rope collar around her throat.
Judith wanted to say something. Anything. Nothing came out though. William looked down into her eyes for a moment.
“Going down,” he announced suddenly, and pushed down on the leash-loop with his hand. Judith was afraid the collar would collapse around her throat, but it didn’t. She struggled against him, but he pulled her forward and she dropped to her knees on the floor. William put his foot inside the loop pinning her down to all fours.
“No, William! I want you to stop, now.”
Slap! His hand came down on her ass. “Shut up. Bad doggie. We don’t have time for whining.” He stroked her sides, back and head. “That’s better. Now what shall I name this little bitch? Ashira? No.… Pheodora? No, no.… How about Kodi? Yes, I like that. Kodi. Do you like it?”
Judith’s face was flushed, burning with embarrassment. I wonder how much of the five minutes is left?
Slap! He spanked her again. “Answer!”
“Y-yes,” she stuttered. “What ever you say.”
“Too bad there isn’t more time. I wonder what tricks I could teach you?”
William twitched up Judith’s skirt.
Her hand shot back automatically to restore it. William caught it and folded it across her back in an arm-lock.
“Now, now. None of that,” he scolded. “Say. Those are nice panties!” He stroked the silk fabric with his free hand and his touch drew the fire from her face, down across her chest, and settled it, burning, between her legs.
“No,” she groaned.
“Beep, beep, beep, … Beep, beep, beep, …”
“Too bad. I should have said ten minutes,” he said. “Oh well. A deal is a deal,” he smoothed her skirt back down, took his foot from the loop, and helped her up. He hooked his fingers under the rope-collar and held her face close to his. “Now there will always be a piece of you that is the little bitch called Kodi. A piece of you that belongs to me. Are you sorry that you pressed it?”
“No,” she whispered.
He dropped his phone into his thigh pocket, took up his pack and coat, gave her one last look, released her, and strode out of the room leaving her there with the rope-collar tied around her neck.