This is Chapter One of my erotic novel, Cult of the Ouroboros, a story about a BDSM romance on a college campus.
All chapters of this novel can be found here.
Chapter One, Alston
If I were honest, I would have admitted to the pleasure of her fear, as she stood in front of me in the weakly-lit hallway, trying to pretend she wasn’t nervous. But she was so afraid, the sweet and acrid scent of her fear twisted my thoughts into hungry, clawing desire.
She stirred an awareness that I knew I should not be feeling for a student. It was an awareness I hadn’t felt in a long time, and, somewhere in my very quiet frontal lobe, I was surprised and horrified at my own reaction.
If I were honest, I would have drunk it in. Drank her in. Tumbled into that chasm of the delicious depravity of power and control and sex.
But I was not honest, because I could not be.
I swallowed that aching craving, and tried to do my job.
She was the first to show up for class, the final laboratory exam for the academic year. Big, swimming brown eyes stared at me, ready to spill with anxiety. She licked her lips, a gesture that belied her unease and made things low in my body tighten. She forced a half-smile. “Can I get my unknown sample for the lab?”
I watched the pulse in her neck palpitate.
No, I couldn’t really see that. Could I?
She was tense; she teased without knowing it. Her whole body radiated her voiceless fear. I was sure that if we stood there long enough, I would watch her quiver and buckle.
I swallowed, again. Hard.
A thought tickled the back of my mind, some desire to put my fingers through that fear and squeeze it, until she screamed.
I took a deep breath, pushing the thought back. L’appel du vide.
Get a hold of yourself, Reese. Jesus Christ.
I tried to pull back, calm my brain, and be a decent human being.
I tore my voice from somewhere dark, willing myself to ask her name, and not order her to her knees. When the words left my lips, I was pleased at how friendly my voice sounded.
Yes, friendly. Normal. Be normal, for God’s sake.
I tried not to watch her lips tremble. “Neely. B. Stacia Neely.”
I found her on the list, took a test tube from the rack, and handed it to her. “Good luck,” I told her, wanting to simultaneously ease her nerves and bask in her angst.
As she scurried off to the bench, I let out a long breath. I willed my blood pressure to normalize. I willed my thoughts back to the tedium of this job, steadying myself after the door to the supply stockroom.
My heart beat feverishly against my sternum.
Had I noticed her in class before?
I thought about that. No, I decided, she must be one of the quiet ones. Although, at my age, it was getting harder to keep track of the several hundred students in this chemistry course.
The faint chittering of the rest of her classmates echoed up the stairs.
I looked at the racks of test tubes, neatly set up on the counter beside me, now minus one. The past week had been spent shoveling the tubes full with this chemical or that, in preparation for their final. One for each student, plus a couple extra for when two or three of them inevitably shattered on the floor.
Just like last year, and the year before that.
Grinding monotony in its complete predictability.
I blinked, feeling the years of this job settle into my shoulders. It was almost a relief, after Ms. Neely. Almost.
One more year. One more year of this soulless drudgery, and I could retire. I looked at the clock on the wall, the ticking loud in my ears.
One more year.
I squinted my eyes, and the columns of test tubes lined up like bars on a cell. I pictured a thousand tiny shards of glass, and an escape into the blinding sunlight.
No.
I couldn’t, no, not yet. I needed to keep up the charade for one more year. In my mind, the shards reformed themselves into the columns I saw in front of me. So delicate, and so unbreakable; appearances are deceiving.
What a fucking trap.
The line of students after Miss Neely queued, as if nothing untoward happened. But then again, nothing had happened. I snuffed the last dark thought, and got on with my work.
I leaned on the stockroom counter, going through the motions.
Name, test tube, pencil in their code. Name, test tube, code. Over and over, student after student.
Time itself seemed to slow. I swear to God, working the factory line was not as mind numbing as this. Or maybe I had just been younger and less jaded.
Here, time had no meaning; it circled back on itself, to infinity. One semester into the next, ad nauseum. The creaking wheel of the university, forever lurching forward.
The memory of Ms. Neely dulled as the tedium took root.
By the time I passed out the last of the test tubes, those fearful eyes were nothing but a dim ache in my gut.
The chattering din of unsettled students played in the lab room next door, as I sat at my desk, watching the weak patches of blue sun skitter across the linoleum. The sun taunted me, evidence of a better life outside of this place. As it was, dingy tiles the color of mud and doors covered with cheap, dark varnish sucked away the strength of the light.
This place swallowed the light.
Everything was done to mask the dirt and grime, to hide the signs of overuse and disrepair. Everything, except fixing it — everything, except caring enough to actually fix it.
I tried to summon some excitement for the end of the school year, something other than this bland emptiness.
I tried, and I failed.
For the eighteen years I had been running this course, and I watched as any real interest dwindled. Between the dead-eyed pre-meds and the overachieving engineering majors, it seemed like students cared less and less as time went on, just looking to get through it as quickly as possible. Why should they care about a basic requirement class, when there are so many more interesting things to study? I struggled to care, myself, faced with such glaring indifference. Why should I care, if they don’t?
Because it’s your job. It’s your job to care.
Curse this fucking job. I had watched class after class come and go, just perpetuating the great heaving bureaucracy.
Were they learning anything? Were they learning to be good scientists, to ask good questions? Would they learn to question the invisible processes behind the facade of life, the extraordinary lurking behind the ordinary?
I sighed.
Maybe I expected too much.
Maybe they had taught me to expect less. After all, I wasn’t really their teacher. I just ran the stockroom and made sure the labs were set up.
The baritone notes of the TA’s voice carried through the walls, introducing the lab. I took the opportunity and hit the elevator call button. I could have taken the stairs. It was only three floors, but I was past caring.
Who gives a shit, when you’re going to smoke another cigarette? What would one more elevator ride hurt? Death comes knocking on everyone’s door eventually.
But even the blessed smoke offered me no warmth today, as I leaned against the red brick exterior of the building, cool from being shaded on the north side. It was still chilly for April, but I could see the pale green of the buds on the trees getting ready to burst. Another year, another ride about the circle. The same thing, over and over and over.
I felt agitated, and I didn’t know why. A hint of that sweet, dark longing flashed across my brain again, but another pull on my cigarette brought me back to the surface. Maybe it was the undulation between the unbidden, velvety lust and the dreary emptiness that had me so unsettled.
The door pushed open, and Ethan Keller strode out toward me, flicking out his own cigarette as he sauntered over. I took another deep breath. Keller was the last person I wanted to see right now.
“Hey, Reese. Can I get a light?”
“Fuck you,” I said, handing him my lighter.
He chuckled and cupped his hand and the tip flared as he took his first draw. “Oh, come on now, Alston.”
I hated the way he said my name, with just the inflection of contempt.
He laughed, either oblivious to my disdain, or willfully ignoring it. “You know I like the ladies.”
Oh, that he did, I knew. I felt my nostrils flare, but I said nothing.
“Got the lab all set up?”
You know I do, I thought. I could set these labs up in my sleep. “No, I just left a bunch of freshmen upstairs with fire and knives and chemicals.”
He nodded, in his distinctively unthoughtful way. “That’s good.” He took another drag.
A little flame of anger flash through my shoulder blades. He wasn’t worth my anger, and I needed to remind myself of that. I inhaled again, willing those leaves to burn faster, just so I didn’t have to keep standing there with him.
Maybe that’s why the students didn’t care anymore. Keller hardly cared. I wondered some days why he even took the position, when it was so clear that he didn’t give a damn. It’s hard to manufacture consideration for the whole, when the head was so disconnected.
There was a time when I wanted to ask. But most days I just didn’t care enough. I settled into the hollowness that allowed me to be past caring about this whole place.
One more year, and then I can be done. Just one more year. The phrase repeated in my mind like a mantra, each word burning itself into the gray flesh of my brain.
We said nothing else to each other, and I stubbed out half my cigarette.
Fuck. I was so tired.
I headed back up to my office, where at least I could be alone in my misery.