Terry de Luca

The sense of relief as one nears the end of college is palpable. Some students, however, find that they get to their senior years, only to have missed some odd requirement to graduate. In Terry's case, she didn't have enough performing arts credits, so she was forced to take a drawing class with one of the meanest professors on campus, since all the other art classes were full or met during her other classes.

Her Art professor had a well-earned reputation for gagging students, and by the time the first month of the semester was over, three of Terry's classmates had already been made to wear gags. Terry had avoided gagging in all her years at the college and worked hard to behave in class, but one day she didn't stop talking with her friends after class started, and her professor approached her with a fresh roll of white duct tape.

Her classmates had received gaggings in excess of a month, and Terry supposed she should be grateful that she "only" got two weeks. Still, as she spent her days with those huge gags tightly on her mouth, unable to talk with anyone or eat outside of her daily appointed meal times, and as everyone laughed at her predicament, especially when she was forced into the quad every day just to endure the stares and teasing of others, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. She couldn't help mmmphing her protests to the teasing, even though it only brought on more teasing and laughing. If only she'd taken another art class in her first years, she thought.