All summer long Millie had had this recurring dream of being watched.

That was it, really, that was the whole dream. All she remembered of it. No place, no circumstance, no plot: no one was even doing the watching. It was a fact of nature, like a climate: everywhere, total, motiveless and unyielding. There was nowhere to hide and nothing for her to hide. It was worse than suffocating, she couldn’t find her breath. A person had breath; in her dream Millie was so much less than that,— an incident, a node of attention. Something the network activated so it had something to survei

When Miss Sarah led her back to the party, when she was under all those eyes, that dream sensation had come rushing back in a rush. Half-naked, halted in the middle of the room as if for inspection, unable to move or to want to: like prey frozen in the gaze of a predator. A predator that was nothing but gaze. She found herself kneeling without remembering how or why she’d got there, her sense of herself all but obliterated under the weight of that compound focus.

It made her wet, just like the dream always did.

Ultimately, Jez had told her, all of that was just stress over her BFA. Millie was going for performance and she had these ideas about spectatorship and surveillance—being seen as an experience in the body— but it was just a set of gestures and she didn’t know what to do with them. She met Jez because he had a reading group that was relevant, one of her profs mentioned it, and she was desperate for some kind of a framework. Right away Jez appointed himself her informal thesis advisor, which was hugely flattering to her and also a huge turn-on. He’d been a big influence pushing her in a more political direction. It wasn’t his fault she couldn’t organize her own thinking. He never got frustrated with her, just kept on trying different angles to strike sparks from. But it did sometimes feel to Millie like she was constantly chasing some new apparition just over the horizon, while the project as a whole kept going further and further adrift.

Tonight though, in with his whole crowd the way she was,— tonight felt different. The year was still young. There was intellect to spare. Tonight’s energy, she told herself, was about breaking through, putting the pieces together. As soon as she’d been liberated from drink service Millie went right over, didn’t even change out of her outfit, and parked herself kneeling in front of the couch, smack in the middle of things. It was bold of her, but she didn’t care. She could go wherever, she was the hit of the party, just like Miss Sarah said. And if she hardly put in a word, the talk itself entranced Millie: how fluidly it moved among the moving groups of people, how its shape and its colors kept shifting, it was a presence to her, a restless sleek animal pacing the outskirts, taking her scent.

Then came the quizzing. People started showing up on the couch to demand—always very politely—an account of her thesis. A small succession of them. That was Jez’s doing, she was sure, trying to draw her out, though it never got very far. She could start well enough: under a regime of total surveillance, what happens to the body? what happens to nakedness? is a self even possible? She had plenty of questions, thanks to Jez’s help, but questions were all she had, and they never stopped chasing each other. Not to mention that she was talking all this blather about nakedness while she had her tits out in a maid costume. She always seemed to forget that until someone brought it up, after which it was all she could think about. Pretty soon she’d be going on about her stress dreams, and how much they haunted her, and how confused and horny she was all the time now, like right now: and then she’d completely lose focus, because she had to use all her brain just to keep from masturbating in front of the people.

There’d been this cute older couple. Super sympathetic. She thought the man might have been a professor, he spoke so elaborately: “unencumbered by costume,” that was the phrase. Millie couldn’t crack it. There’d been this long pause, then his wife kind of took pity on her and slipped off the couch and started undoing her bodice, and that’s when she got it, that he wanted her naked. They were so cute together. Millie imagined being like that with Jez someday. The lady winked at her and started fondling her breasts and Millie just felt so appreciated she had to make out with her for a little bit. Just as a thank-you.

Then someone had said “Down girl” and she realized she was humping the older woman’s thigh. People laughed, and it made Millie want to sink into the floor. After that it seemed like people wanted to avoid her. She wished she could crawl away, but it would’ve just drawn looks. She knelt there, lonely, folded into herself, her titties still burning from Professor Lady’s enthusiasm, and at some point her hand got between her legs. She left it there. Like they’d notice, she thought bitterly, and glanced up at the empty couch.

Except it wasn’t empty. Katy and Jez were there. Millie’s heart leapt painfully. You guys, she wanted to shout, where have you even been? But she was kneeling, and kneeling in front of Jez meant speak when you’re spoken to. She’d been trained to that so good by now it was an effort to remember it was roleplay. Part of those very hot, very wrong antifeminist games they’d been playing lately to get her further with her thesis.

Jez was hunting his pockets for his vape. Katy, one long arm stretched along the back of the couch in his direction, playing her fingers in the hair above his neck, reached with the other for a martini glass someone was holding out. She was wearing that lofty, ironic expression of hers, and Millie had never seen a woman she thought of calling delicious before, but Katy was delicious. She’d do every bit as well as Jez to kneel to. When Katy’s gaze lit on Millie the remnant of hypnoslut in her from earlier  made her straighten her back and spread her knees wider apart.

“I thought I heard the word ‘surveillance’ over here one or two times,” Katy said. She said it at Millie but she was talking to Jez, who snickered. “One or two dozen,” he scoffed. Having found the vape he took a quick toke before gesturing it in Katy’s direction. She waved him off and he moved to stash the pen away again, then thought better of it. He leaned down and put the business end to Millie’s lips and pressed the button.

He left it go long enough that Millie was coughing and already very stoned by the time it withdrew. She was such a lightweight. Jez took these kind of rips and it never fazed him. When he’d started doing it, pushing the vape on her like this, she’d been a little scared to get this high. She still kind of was. And he did it so often at first that she worried stoned was the only way he really liked her. But it was just more roleplay. It resonated with that very deep thing he’d told her once, that she thought about all the time, that she wouldn’t fully understand what her subject was till she’d learned how to get rid of her no.

She was kind of proud of the vape thing actually, that he’d never asked permission, and she’d never even considered a protest.

Millie glanced up at Katy. However embarrassed she was to be seen like this, part of her was eager to know how the good-girl performance was hitting. Also she was higher than the fucking moon, and it was always a pleasant surprise when it came over her just how submissive that made her. Katy smiled at her, if you could call it that,— just a slight turning-up at the corners of the mouth, and so cruel-looking it made Millie’s pussy weep. She took a slow, somehow patronizing sip from her drink, all the while making it obvious she was inspecting Millie’s tits. Millie had a crazy urge to grovel to her and lick her feet. Light glinted off the martini glass, and it passed her into a brief, intense vision of Katy putting the drink down and bending to Millie and pulling her head back hard by the hair and ramming her tongue down her throat

Someone was going to need to start bossing her around pretty soon. Jez meanwhile was ranting on about theory again. “You want to scramble somebody’s otherwise serviceable brains,” he was saying, “feed em on the post-structuralists.” Post-fuckturalist, Millie thought. And just like that she knew she was done with it all, all that intellectual shit, it was so fucking over: she couldn’t fathom it, it made her sick. It was all such phony bullshit. “Performance major to boot,” his voice like curdled cream, “like a cat trying to teach itself algebra.” Snide prick. She knew she was stupid. He didn’t have to be such a snide prick about it.

Katy looked sternly at Jez. “Well I think it’s cute,” she said, giving Millie a conspiratorial wink. “I think stupid dollies ought to be encouraged to read whatever they can manage to. Don’t you, Millie dollie?”

At Katie’s wink Millie completely lost her words. She opened her mouth then couldn’t think what else to do with it. Katy shook her head and set her glass on the side table. She reached a hand out, as languid as all her gestures, and pressed the tip of her forefinger into the crook of Millie’s nose. Millie’s eyes went crossed trying to track it. “Yes Katy, you’re so right,” she ventriloquized, pushing the girl’s head up and down, “that’s exactly what I think, Katy.”

The condescension was breathtaking, literally. There was some version of Millie that wanted to bite that finger clean off, but all this version could do was simper like a brain-dead bimbo and repeat “Yes Katy you’re so right that’s exactly what I think Katy” and of course it was right and she did think it, whatever it was, even if all the nodding made it hard to keep track. If Katy thought it that was all Millie had to know. When Katy laughed and took her finger back Millie laughed with her and her empty head kept right on bobbing, like the agreeablest dollie ever.

Katy looked back over her shoulder. The mass of partygoers seemed to have formed up around the couch area now, and Millie saw Miss Sarah coming through them. Hey cutie! how’d I misplace you, Millie thought. Of all people. Now it was Sarah on the leash, and she looked different, imposing. Taller even. She was wearing a heavy, evil-looking studded dog collar, pink hair all slicked back, her face empty and fierce. She moved with a smooth, focused self-forgetfulness, like a real-life version of the fembot Millie had been playing at when they did drink sluts.

They tugged the senior girl forward to the edge of the sort of cleared-out space in front of the couch—like a stage, almost—where only Millie was. Sarah had on high black spike-heeled boots, skintight over the knee, and under a painfully tight harness of leather straps was otherwise naked. But the cute shaved twat was out of sight, a shiny, jet-black, realistic cock affixed over it, bigger almost than Sarah was. It bobbed and swung in front of her as she moved and was the only part of the tranced girl that seemed to have an independent will. Millie watched the highlights gleam and shift around its thick molded veins.

It hadn’t occurred to Millie they’d want Miss Sarah to fuck her. But what else were the two of them for?

“Hey! Drooly.” Katy snapped her fingers. Millie’s mouth was still hanging open, and Katy, smirking, pushed up under her chin to close it. “We getting antsy? Got a little thought-thought percolatin’ in the old noddle?” She knocked lightly on the top of Millie’s head a couple times.

Katy exchanged a look with Jez, of her seeming to ask, and him to give permission. “Come on then,” she told Millie, gesturing with her hand, “kneel up straight. All the way. Shoulders back! Shove those tits out at me.”

There was a tube of lipstick in Katy’s hand. Millie glanced down and noticed how bad the professor lady had messed with her titty makeup, and her nips tightened to think of Katy herself sprucing them up. “We’re gonna play a game,” Katy said, leaning in, “a reading game.” She held the lipstick up for Millie to see. Millie couldn’t think what she meant. “Cuz you like to read, remember Mills? You were just telling us.”

Mills was barely able to remember to nod her head. “So what we’re going to do is, I’m going to write a word on your chest. No peeking till I’m done,” Katy said, wagging the tube of lipstick at her. “One teensy little word. And if you can read that word—and nobody. can help you” she added, pointing the tube admonishingly around at onlookers—“well then you know what? You win! And all that thesis nonsense you’ve been worrying about so much, it’ll all be taken care of.”

Katy uncapped the lipstick. It was darker than Miss Sarah’s, and for a moment Millie was worried about it clashing, till she remembered this wasn’t about her nips. “I’ll even give you a clue,” Katy said brightly. “The clue is, it’s the title of your thesis. Remember to phrase your answer in the form of a question.”

Millie flushed very hot, like in school when you weren’t ready for a quiz. Her stupid thesis title. She’d never even figured one out. Katy started to write and it felt to Millie like her body was being accelerated through time. Now they’d all see she was fraud. Even before the lipstick touched her she was trembling. She fixed her gaze on the ceiling and tried to breathe in calm from the scent of Katy’s hair, but there were so many people now, she couldn’t not know they were there. Back of the couch, off to the sides, she could hear them behind her. All waiting for her to fail.

Someone said “C” in a loud voice after the first letter, and Katy looked up annoyed and yelled “No kibitzing!” Mills beamed a ray of mental hatred at them for trying to make her know a letter when it wasn’t time to, but for a moment the interruption steadied her nerves.

“Finished,” Katy said at last, drawing back. It was too soon. Millie looked down at herself. The first thing she saw, despairingly, was that it looked like two words, one up right between her boobs and then a longer one underneath them. She had a sharp feeling of no fair, not that she’d have said anything. Plus the letters were all weird. There was an O and an H you could make out, maybe a backwards E? And whatever letter that guy shouted that she’d made sure to forget. But really it was just this little thicket of symbols, and it was so much pressure being on the spot to decipher them in front of everyone! Someone commenced with the tick-tock game-show music and she got a little panicky. She started tracing over the letters with her fingers, thinking maybe that would get them into her head, but they were lipstick and the more Mills tried to force it the smearier and slipperier and more unreadable she got. She saw herself making a spectacle of herself literally greasing up her tits with the title of her thesis and she was too wasted and dumb and ashamed to be able to even stop.

Millie looked up when she realized she was hearing laughter. All the party people were laughing at her. Katy was laughing at her. “You precious dope” she said, showing Millie an open compact, “I was going to give you a mirror!”

Mills felt herself crumple. “I’m sorry Katy,” she wailed, “I’m so dumb, I’m not this dumb, really, I— I was trying so hard to …” and after that the apology dissolved into keening, Katy shooshing her and cupping her cheek. “It’s alright baby,” she cooed, wiping with her thumb under Millie’s eye, “it’s alright we like you dumb. You’re so much cuter like this.” She glanced over at Sarah and at a motion of her head the girl and her giant cock came bobbing over.

There was some comedy with the thing prodding Millie in the spine and then trying to poke a hole in her ass cheek, but at last there was Miss Sarah kneeling behind her, her breath warm against Millie’s neck, her big scary dick tucked neatly under Millie’s thighs. Sarah’s hands closed around her tits and the embrace seemed to right the world again. Millie sighed and settled back against her.

Not that she had forgotten her disappointment. “Did I lose the game?” she asked Katy, feeling still on the verge of tears. Katy chuckled. “How about it,” she looked around at the guests, “E for effort? Who thinks we oughta let the dummy win anyway?”

The room broke out in applause. Miss Sarah pinched her nipples, hard and fast, like she was joining in. They like me dumb, Mills thought warmly. Behind the couch she spied the nice professor lady from before, and she squirmed against Sarah’s grasp all sexy, to show how she remembered them making out. The lady put up her phone to get Mills on video.

There were a lot of phones up. Millie heard a loud pop from somewhere. Someone put a glass in Katy’s hand. “Alright.” She took a last sip from her martini glass and set it aside. “The correct question is …” Half her face lamplit, the other half in shadow, she looked powerful and mythic, like an oracle. If Sarah hadn’t been holding her Mills would have groveled.

Katy leaned fully forward and brushed Millie’s ear with her lips. She felt as much as heard her whisper, “What is camwhore.”

She felt the way you did after an accident. Something had just shifted the world onto another track and in your daze you couldn’t put together what. WHAT IS CAMWHORE? It was an oracle’s riddle. It left nothing of her but an empty space that vibrations clanged through.

Another pop. Jez came around from behind the couch and came up beside them. The room hushed. He had two champagne flutes in his hand, and handed Katy one.“Katy—” she lifted her glass up, “ladies and gentlemen of the Society, for your approval: camwhore.”

There was a longer round of applause and a general shout of “CAMWHORE!” She’d been holding her breath without knowing it, and it all sighed out of her at once. Someone turned up the party music. On the couch Katy and Jez clinked their glasses together. “Jeremy darling she’s everything,” Katy said, “you’ve outdone yourself.” They kissed amid a saccade of camera flashes.

When her vision cleared again, camwhore looked around for Professor Lady. Something she had to tell her. Miss Sarah had been teasing that big shaft all up and down her cunt lips and she needed it bad, but no matter how camwhore wriggled herself around she couldn’t coax the beast inside her. She didn’t know the command. Somebody needed to give the command soon, because this was her time when she was supposed to get fembot-raped. She was sure of it. But she was surrounded by a wall of phones, and there was no someone to appeal to.

Lenses everywhere. She felt the attention slide across her skin like a netting, weightless but palpable. She closed her eyes and stretched her arms up into the feeling, flirting her hands to the sky like Marilyn or Madonna, unsure if she was moving or being moved. Sarah grabbed her face from behind and pulled her into a violent, bruising kiss. And when she released her again camwhore knew what she needed to say. She opened her arms to the crowd of phones and gathered them all into a big showbiz hug. “I’m having the most sexiest dream,” she explained to them. She was sobbing and couldn’t control it and didn’t want to. She started blowing kisses around and exclaiming “i’m a STAR” to everyone, hoping Professor Lady heard, though in the din of music and party talk and congratulations she couldn’t even hear herself.

She wondered if what was happening to her could really be happening. Miss Sarah grunted in her ear and struck her hard across the shoulder blades and camwhore’s head hit the floor. It was a surprise, getting it in the ass. She’d never taken it there. The cock was huge and barely lubricated and it felt like the whole party ramrodding her all together. It was the greatest feeling she’d ever known.

When she could breathe again camwhore screamed “i’m a STAR” into the carpet and got stuck there, “i’m a STAR i’m a STAR” at every one of the fembot’s deeper and deeper thrusts, till her voice was hoarse and somebody kicked her in the side and told her shut the fuck up.