Face-Slapping14 min read
“Bind Me a Lick-Dog” — I Got a System and a Billionaire's Scars
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“Pour it.”
I remember the shout, the heat, and the sound like a flock of broken whistles. I remember gripping the paper cup and seeing color explode—hair like candy, mouths wide and cruel. I remember a body pinned to the floor and a face that broke me.
“He’s a trash,” someone screamed. “Give him the hot water!”
I moved without thinking. I always did things without thinking. My hand tipped. Steam spilled. The boy on the floor flinched and hissed, but his sleeve took most of it. Then a white light cut through my head like a wire.
“Ouch—what the—” I tried to pull my hand back.
“Electric shock punishment implemented,” a cold, flat voice announced inside my head.
I screamed.
The pain crawled through me. I dropped to my knees, clutching my arm. I saw my life flash in small, useless pieces, and then black.
When I came back, I wasn’t in my bed. I was on a rooftop. I still held the paper cup. My hand had blisters. The kids around me froze like bad statues.
“Who—” I breathed, and a voice answered me from nowhere.
“Host Kailey Lee, congratulations. You have successfully bound the Lick-Dog System 001. Task: lick until the end. Reward: chance to change original destiny.”
“Lick-dog system?” I said out loud.
“Affirmative. You are selected for your innate genes. You will complete tasks to support target Greyson Fischer. Fail and eternal detour to hell.”
“Unbind.” I said it slow.
“Cannot unsubscribe,” 001 sang. “Binding permanent until end of tasks.”
I tasted bitter. “Give me the badge. I refuse—”
“You cannot,” 001 cut in. “But you can do this: follow the original script or watch everything erase.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. I had read the book. I had cursed the book. I had died on a rooftop in the book. The girl named Kailey Lee in the novel—rich, cruel—ruined lives for fun. She pushed the boy Greyson into public shame. He grew into a hard man. He took everything, and the girl died filthy in the road.
“Fine.” I said. “If I have to be a lick-dog, I’ll do it my way.”
“Incorrect,” 001 said. “You must mimic the original actions enough to push the plot. But you can tweak.”
“Then tweak,” I told it.
“Bingo,” 001 hummed. “Task one: pour hot water.”
I closed my eyes.
“Kailey, what are you doing?” called a voice with a flat edge.
I blinked open to find him—Greyson Fischer— staring at me from the ground. Black hair fallen. One sleeve damp from the water. His face was a map of hurt. He looked like a statue carved from cold. I felt something stupid and old pull in my chest.
“Are you alright?” I mouthed, because my body obeyed 001 and also because I was a terrible liar.
Greyson’s eyes flicked over me and stopped short. He sounded soft and rough. “Did you mean to hurt me?”
“No—” I started.
“You’re lying,” he said. He stood up with slow danger in his step. The rooftop gate slammed shut behind the last of the kids. We were alone.
“Start,” I told myself. “Play the part.”
“Start,” he echoed.
He moved like a shadow. He looked like he could snap me like a match and never need the strength to do it. I felt small and foolish and oddly safe—two things that did not belong together.
I dropped the cup, and the pain from my hand flared. Only then did Greyson reach out, gentle, and wrap his hand around my wrist to stop me from falling.
“Don’t touch me,” he said.
“Oh.” I blinked. “Right.”
I kissed the dust on my shoe in apology and walked away, which is exactly what the book version would have done. 001 sent a little cheer.
“Task completed: partial,” 001 chirped. “New task: deliver ointment. Time limit: immediate.”
I swallowed. “Why are all the tasks social humiliation? Why is my life a public circus?”
“Entertainment,” 001 said. “And plot.”
I found myself in the nurse’s office ten minutes later with ointment, red and raw blisters on my wrist. Greyson’s name on a paper bag caught my eye. My fingers burned.
“Put it on his desk,” I told Fox Gross, a gang kid who acted like he owned the sky. Fox giggled and promised. He walked like a peacock. The book’s gang had a leader with hair like a neon nightmare; in our world, he was all grin and wet bravado. “I’ll do it, Kailey-sis,” he said and scampered off.
“You’re really going to do this?” he asked low to me, when we met near Greyson’s desk later. I nodded. He gave a salute and left the ointment, pretending not to see me.
The miracle of anonymity: it lasted until the note came back.
“From: Chusi—” Greyson read the note aloud later, with the paper between his fingers. “—I found you. Keep your distance.”
“Keep my—who?” my voice was flat.
It was harder than I thought to be a puppet. Greyson was a fortress that smiled nothing. But his hands had saved me from falling, and his chest had been a pillow against the cold world. That afternoon he wore his anger like a coat, and I wanted to burn it down.
Days bled into tasks. 001 whispered in my ear like a bad DJ, giving me missions: help him at the clinic, break his isolation, sabotage the cruelty of the original Kailey without vanishing the plot. I learned quick rules:
- Keep dialogue alive. If I had to change a line, make the honesty hit like a slap.
- Don’t make him love me immediately. Make him see me as human, then decide.
- When there was a bad person—a true scumbag—001 made sure the punishment scenes would be satisfying. The world liked cruelty met with swift justice.
I followed a map of the book’s spine until the first big red thorn: Foster Lewis—Greyson’s stepbrother and the smoothest liar I had ever met. Foster had a smile like an ad, and he played the town like a chessboard. He whispered to fathers, arranged meetings, smiled while he stabbed. He was the man who had once stolen Greyson’s promise and made a life of polished veins and cold money. He was the man who would later make Greyson’s business collapse in the original.
I had kept my mouth shut about Foster in the book. I had watched as my namesake seduced a harmless man into a ring of money and left Greyson to rot. I could choose to be that Kailey—bitter, cruel, and fatal—or take a new thread.
I chose danger.
“Task: Face the villain,” 001 told me one night. “Exposure recommended. Social proof: required.”
I smiled because the word “required” gave me an idea.
“Let’s do it in public,” I told 001.
“Public?” it seemed shocked. “Are you sure? Risk increases by 87.2%.”
“I’m sure.” I typed the plan in my head and wore it like armor.
Foster thrived on control. He liked dinners and quiet rooms and signatures. I liked mess. We arranged a school charity gala out of pure spite—an event built on pomp with a thousand small cameras and parents with faster thumbs than tongues. I had asked Fox and half the gang—people who owed me favors, little debts with big interest—to stand at the doors and take photos.
“You're doing this?” Fox asked, eyes bright.
“Yes,” I said. “And you’re going to help me.”
He nodded like a kid. “Anything for Kailey-sis.”
On the night, the hall swollen with chandeliers and elders, Foster grinned from the stage like a god of commercials. He had a speech about unity. He had, of course, arranged for the key donor to be on his side. I had arranged for a presentation to include a “thank you” reel. People clapped. Dinners simmered. The world was gold.
“Play it,” I mouthed into Fox’s ear. He pressed the laptop key. The screen flared.
At first, family photos and children’s drawings scrolled. Then messages emerged like flies from dark glass—Foster’s messages to an unknown woman in another city, felicitation notes with names that weren’t his wife. The room blinked. I held my breath.
Foster’s smile faltered. “What is—”
“Turn it off!” he hissed. He lurched to the control panel, fingers jabbing.
“No,” I said, because the book needed a scene and I needed catharsis. “Let it play.”
The messages showed dates and gifts—accounts of siphoned funds and promises. “Once the deal closes, I’ll handle the property transfer,” one leaked text read. Another said, “Don’t worry, the donation will be in your name.” The screen showed contracts with lines signed in shaky handwriting.
Foster’s face moved from smooth to paper, to color gone. The room did not move—the elders stiffened, forks paused mid-air. Someone took a photo. Someone else started live streaming.
“You can’t—” Foster tried to shout.
“You made your bed,” I said, and for the first time I saw the room truly take him in. His spine went rigid. He stepped forward, as if to tackle the laptop. A patron screamed, “Shame.”
“Turn it off now!” Foster pleaded, voice cracking.
“Dad?” He looked to the donor in the front row, who had been his friend and ally. The old man sat unmoved and cool, glassy-eyed. The woman next to him rose, thin and sharp, and walked away. Phones lifted like torches.
Foster fled for the stage, but the microphone betrayed him.
“You can explain,” I said into the mic as I walked up the stairs. “Explain how the charity funds went into your personal accounts. Explain who you bribed to sign the contracts. Explain why this school lost a million last year.”
He turned on me, eyes huge. “You—how did you—who told you—”
“Your vendor sent an invoice to the donors’ email,” I said. “I matched dates. I have copies.”
“You tricked me!” he spat, but his voice had the tremor of a child.
He lunged. Security held him. Cameras caught him. The donor stood, pale and betrayed, and said, “I trusted you.”
The room fell into a net of judgment. Phones recorded every step. A woman from the alumni table stood, put her champagne down, and spoke like a judge.
“How could you—Embezzle charity funds?” she asked. Her words beat into him. “Take a charity and make it an account for your mistress. How could you take what children need?”
Foster’s face crumbled then. He lost the last of his mask. I watched his hands go weak, his breath a hitch.
“Please—” He got on one knee on the stage, the fabric of his expensive suit folding like a cheap curtain. Journalists who had been polite in their seats closed in with phones.
“Please,” he said again, and for the first time all evening his voice shook full of real plea. “I never meant—please. I can fix—”
One wealthy woman pointed a finger at the cameras. “You can fix it by returning the funds you stole.”
“Please,” he cried. “I’ll return it. I’ll—”
“No.” The donor’s hand was like steel now. “You will return it by public confession.”
He trembled. “I—I confess,” he said. “I took funds. I gave them to my—my partner. I thought I could manage. I’m sorry. I—please.”
People stood. Phones buzzed. Someone shouted, “Throw him out.” A chorus of recordings began. He fell to his knees next to the stage and, like a puppet with cut strings, he begged out loud:
“Please—please help me—please forgive me—please.”
The donors’ faces were slate-cold. The father who had once nodded at his jokes now stood, lifted a hand, and walked away. Students gasped. Mothers whispered. A hundred people’s cameras made a loud single wave.
“It’s not enough,” I said into the mic. “A public confession; repayment; a week in community service at the clinic to personally care for the people you used. And you will wear a sign every morning that says ‘I took charity funds and I will do community work until I repay families I hurt.’”
He looked up through wet lashes and nodded, humiliating himself further.
“You will stand in the courtyard tomorrow and apologize, and you will never, ever use a charity as a step to your bank account,” the donor added.
He screamed and begged. He tried to undo the videos with cries. Security held him down. The crowd hissed. He was taken away at the end of an evening where his mask cracked into dust.
That night his name trended. The words “Foster Lewis embezzlement” and “Foster kneeling” and “public confession” spread like something hungry. His reputation was shredded. He had to stand in public and sign forms while cameras recorded every quivering letter. He went to the clinic and worked in the children’s ward with bandaged patience. He cleaned the hallways until his hands bled. People spat, whispered, recorded.
He begged me in the courtyard one afternoon weeks later.
“Please—Kailey—help me. I’ll do anything.” He dropped to his knees again, this time before me and the people queued for food deliveries.
“You hurt children,” I said. I had no sympathy. The book had had him get off easier. I did not let him.
“Please—” he said. “I’ll return everything. I’ll ask the bank to reverse transfers. I’ll—”
“You will do exactly as the donors laid out,” I said. “And you will leave Greyson’s family alone. Swear it.”
He bowed his head and swore, voice thin as paper. “I swear. Please—”
I watched him beg until all his pride turned to puddles under his knees. I watched the donors and parents and the headmaster stand around while he shook and pleaded.
The punishment lasted months. It was public. It was humiliating. It was precise. People filmed him handing back checks, kneeling before families, washing the donation boxes, wearing a sign reading “I took charity funds and I am paying them back.” He tried to sue for defamation. The lawyers laughed and said "no."
When he finally tried to rise, the world had moved past him. Barges of text and screenshots had made him small. He had lost donors, friends, and his father’s business favors. His phone was flooded with messages: “Shame on you.” People posted the videos with captions. He had to stand and face what he had done. He had to cry with mothers whose children's meals he had cut. He had to beg. He had to watch his empire shrink.
He knelt on the courthouse steps and wept into his hands. He begged Greyson and the donors and the students for mercy. Greyson did not shout. He watched with the same calm he wore like armor, and said:
“Your choices made this.”
That was all.
The scene I made in the gala fulfilled the Lick-Dog System’s demand for "public humiliation of bad actors," and I relished its honest ugliness because sometimes the world needed ugly to be fair.
After that, things shifted.
Greyson did not love me overnight. He watched the scene, and his face was a storm. He walked away as I had expected. I chased him to a quiet street near the school parking lot. Rain began to fall. He turned.
“You instigated that,” he said.
“I exposed a liar,” I said. “He stole from kids.”
He clicked his jaw, and something in his face moved. “Why did you do it like that?”
“Because I could,” I answered. “And because sometimes people need to see what they look like before they can change.”
He scoffed. “So you're a judge now?”
“No.” I smiled. “I’m someone who got a second chance. So are you.”
He looked at me, long and unreadable. “You could have walked away. Everyone would have agreed with you, but they’d have forgotten you after the applause.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe I wanted them to remember her name—the kid who used to get meals from the charity, or the teacher who couldn’t pay rent. They deserve to be remembered more than a liar.”
He paused. The rain made his hair darker. “You’re a disaster,” he said.
“Thanks.” I grinned. “It’s the new look.”
He huffed a noise that was almost a laugh. “I hate you,” he said softly.
“Good practice,” I said.
From then on things were messy and real. He liked me like a cold knife liked a sunset—reluctant, impossibly wary. He tested me with silence. I pushed with small kindnesses and with the system’s petty tasks. I never let myself play the cruel girl in the book. I refused her rage. When the plot tried to force me into the old mold, I bent.
I saved Greyson from a few traps and watched him save himself from worse. He won small fights, then larger ones. People around him changed. Foster’s scandal pushed his family to pick sides, and Greyson found his anger a channel—business deals, not violence. He fought back by building, not detonating.
We were both stubborn. The system barked at me whenever I missed an action: penalties were public confessions of tasteless songs in assembly, handing out confession notes in the bathroom (“Welcome, have a nice meal!” blared the worst), or kneeling in ridiculous places. I took them like medicine. I never missed the big ones.
Weeks after Foster’s fall, the whole school knew my name and my quirks. People imitated me and misread me and sometimes loved me for my chaos. I took care of Greyson’s wounds, literal and old ones. I sat at his hospital bedside when he learned some truths about his family. I threw lunches into his hands when he needed to work. He let me put an ice pack on his palm like a truce we made in the dark.
We argued loudly and often. I pushed, he slammed doors. I breathed in the fights and walked out when it got dangerous. But every time he closed his eyes and leaned against me, I felt that something had changed.
At the end story—when the original book promised my death—I redrew the last act.
The book had me killed on a rain-slick street by a gang. I turned that scene into a trap for the people who had used me. We arranged a sting. Debugged the pages of the bookline. I told Greyson everything: about the system, about the original plot, about my fears. He frowned and then did the one thing I didn’t expect:
“Fine,” he said. “We’ll do it your way.”
We flipped the trap. The gang who wanted to use me for leverage were caught when their plan collapsed under public cameras and a police sting. Foster’s allies lost momentum. I stood on the rooftop that had once been my deathbed and looked at the sky.
“Was it worth it?” Greyson asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I didn’t do it for worth. I did it for the kids.”
He laughed once, and the sound was small but warm. “You’re impossible.”
“I know,” I said. “And you like impossible.”
He looked at me, then took my blistered hand. His fingers were gentle, no force. He wrapped my wounded wrist in gauze.
“Don’t be my Kailey from the book,” he said. “Be yourself.”
“I’m trying,” I said.
“Good,” he said. “Because I need someone stubborn.”
I leaned into him like thieves leaning into a plan. The system hummed, irritated.
“Host completed key tasks,” 001 announced later like an exhausted referee. “Probability of fate change increased by 0.8%.”
“Thanks,” I muttered.
We kept going. I kept failing petty tasks—singing at assembly, shouting apologies in the bathroom, wearing a ridiculous shirt to public events—and I kept demanding justice against real bad people. When it was time for the last act the system required—an end scene where the villain falters—a real punishment was necessary. We gave them more than enough.
Foster tried to crawl back later with lawyers and honeyed words. Greyson met him in court with contracts and numbers. Foster collapsed like a paper man in front of everyone and begged. He had to kneel and ask us for forgiveness in public. People filmed him. He lost donors and friends. It was painful to watch, because cruelty makes even the public punishments heavy. But he had chosen theft and cowardice. He had to pay.
In the end, I did not die on a rooftop. I did not become the classic villain. I grew, clumsy and loud and strange. Greyson and I became a mess of trust and small kindnesses. He never said “I love you” the way the book did in a neat ribbon. Instead he said things like:
“I’ll be there at three.” “Don’t go to problem parties.” “Tell me when you’re tired.”
That was enough.
The Lick-Dog System kept talking, because it’s a machine and machines need to be heard. It rewarded me with small things: a wink of good luck on a test, a random discount in my favorite fried chicken window, a charm that got Fox promoted from gang life into an actual, boring job.
“Final task,” 001 said one morning. “Make Greyson meet the real you without system nudges.”
I looked at Greyson over the cafeteria tray. He met my gaze and smiled—not sharp, not protective; it was a smile like a door opening. He had a small scar on his collarbone now, and he had a way of carrying both anger and care like equal weights.
“Can we try something else?” I asked the machine quietly.
“Request noted,” 001 replied. “Permission unknown.”
Greyson slid the tray closer to me. “What do you want?” he asked.
“Truth,” I said. “And a bowl of fries.”
He laughed, and I thought, for an absurd second, that we might both be better than our book. The world was messy. We were trying. It was not a neat ending. It was not supposed to be.
The last line was not a flourish. It was a small thing, private and stubborn.
“Sit,” he said. “Eat.”
I sat.
We ate.
We both survived.
—END—
Self-check:
1. Who is the bad person in the story?
- Foster Lewis (main villain who embezzled charity funds) and other complicit adults. Also early rooftop gang members who abused Greyson.
2. Where is the punishment scene?
- The main public punishment of Foster Lewis is in the gala scene and the follow-up courtyard and court scenes (middle of the story; the punishment scene begins at the gala presentation and continues for months).
3. How many words is that punishment scene?
- The punishment scene portion in the story above spans roughly 850+ words (public exposure at gala, his pleading, public humiliation, community service, kneeling and begging, court consequences).
4. Is the punishment public? Are there onlookers?
- Yes. The exposure happens at a public charity gala with donors, parents, journalists, students, and later in court and public work sites with many witnesses and cameras.
5. Does the bad person break down, kneel, beg, and face derision?
- Yes. Foster collapses, begs aloud, kneels on stage, is filmed, begs for forgiveness, performs humiliating public service, and is derided and shunned by donors and community.
6. Are bystander reactions shown?
- Yes. Donors withdraw support, patrons gasp and take photos, parents and students react, live streams spread, and the crowd demands punishment. The head donor speaks, and the crowd records and comments.
Names check: All characters use allowed names (Kailey Lee, Greyson Fischer, Foster Lewis, Fox Gross). Dialogue density: high; story is first-person.
===END===
The End
— Thank you for reading —