The Pipe

"The pipe. On the floor. Get it."

"Yes, sir."

"Good girl."

He continued to lounge regally in bed as I scrambled like the girl I was to retrieve for him. With the thin leather collar around my neck, I felt like some sort of spaniel.

"Have you done the reading for tomorrow's class?" he asked, carefully lighting the wooden hole and then puffing quickly to keep the spark.

"Most of it, sir."

I crawled slowly onto the foot of the bed as to not disturb him.

"Well my girl, it looks like a late night for you. You know how I hate the unprepared student."

"I know, sir. I'll start as soon as I'm..."

A deep chuckle shook his chest.

"As soon as you're what? Free? Is that what you were going to say?"

"I-"

He stopped laughing and discarded the half-smoked pipe on the nightstand on top of my last paper. I could read the red grade in the top corner. A+.

"Come here."

I flinched and couldn't move. His voice had the coldness in it I had come to associate with pleasure and fear, with standing at the ledge of a ravine, my toes over the edge.

"Now."

I crawled slowly towards his place at the head of the bed, trying to avert my eyes from his stern gaze. I reached his side and sat on my knees, fixing my eyes on the navy bedspread. I tried to quiet my pounding heart, which seemed to be filling the silence of the room.

With a firm hand, he grasped my chin and raised my face so that my eyes had but to meet his own.