"While curious, this tale didn't seem to accomplish anything particular."
—Rejection letter from the editors of Indigenous Fiction

1

An envelope was in my mailbox. I removed it, looked at it. Read it.

My home address in neat cursive handwriting. A return address in the same handwriting, but no name . . .

I carried the envelope through a door. I removed a butterfly knife from a drawer, twisted out the blade, opened the envelope, closed the knife and put it away. Inside the envelope was a single slip of paper that I carefully unfolded with one hand as with the other hand I crumpled up the envelope into a tight ball and deposited it in the nearest trash receptacle. No date on the slip of paper, no name or address, no Dear, no Sincerely or Cordially. Only a message. It was in the very middle of the paper and had been typed there in bold print. It read:

I have a message for you.

I blinked . . . Then I threw the message away and started wondering if I should eat a snack, take a power nap, or do some push-ups. Should I do one of these things, or all of them, or just two of them? And if I choose to do two or all of them, in what order should I proceed?

2

An envelope was in my mailbox. I removed it, turned it over a few times in my hands. Read it.
My home address in neat cursive handwriting. A return address in the same handwriting, but no name. On the stamp was a picture of Elvis, the fat one. Stamped on the stamp was the date and the name of the city I lived in. There was nothing else.

I carried the envelope through a door. I removed a butterfly knife from a drawer, twisted out the blade, opened the envelope, closed the knife and put it away. Inside the envelope was a single slip of paper that I carefully unfolded with one hand as with the other hand I crumpled up the envelope into a tight ball and deposited it in the nearest trash receptacle. No date on the slip of paper, no name or address, no Dear, no Sincerely or Cordially. Only a message. It was in the very middle of the paper and had been typed there in bold print. It read:

I have a message for you.

I stared plain-faced at the message for half a minute, reading it over and over . . . Then I placed the message on a desk and walked into a kitchen. I opened and stared into a refrigerator . . . ate a few pieces of ersatz crab meat and washed the snack down with a small glass of orange juice . . . dabbed the corners of my mouth with a paper towel, walked back to the desk, picked up the message and read it once more before crumpling it up and throwing it away.

3

An envelope was in my mailbox. I saw it there, and closed my mailbox. Then I opened it back up and removed the envelope and read it and carried it through a door, squinting at the stamp, a head shot of James Dean, who was smiling like a Howdy Doody ventriloquist doll. "Or is that Howdy Doody?" I muttered to myself.
Without opening it, I placed the envelope on a desk and frowned at the return address. Was it familiar?

As familiar as it was the last two times I saw it.

I used a butterfly knife to open the envelope which I balled up tightly and threw in the nearest trash receptacle after I finished opening and closing and returning the knife to the drawer I removed it from and as I did this I unfolded the slip of paper I had removed from inside the envelope with my eyes closed and I held the paper in front of my closed eyes for a ten count. Then I opened my eyes.

I have a message for you.

After reading the message a few times, I turned the slip of paper over. Nothing there. I held the paper up to a light source, still focusing on its backside, and read the message that way. It didn't make sense; most of the letters were backwards. So I removed a pen from a chalice in which there were a number of pens of numerous colors and kinds and on a separate sheet of paper wrote the message down backwards, with the letters forwards, and with the period at the end of it, or rather, at the beginning of it. I read the message aloud.

uoy rof egassem a evah I.

I read the message aloud again, this time in a different accent, a British one. Then I tried on a French, a German, a Slavic, a Mandarin Chinese accent. Then I wrote the message down on a computer screen and began manipulating the period, placing it after the word rof first, then in the middle of egassem, between the a and the first s. Then I started manipulating letters, trying to form legible or nearly legible words, particularly out of egassem, which had the most potential, which was the heart of the message syntactically and semantically, but which refused to be decoded into anything but the word message . . . unless, of course, I considered it phonetically.

"He gassed ‘em?" I said. I fingered my chin. "He gassed . . . me?" I fingered my chin some more.

Then threw the slip of paper in the nearest trash receptacle.

4

An envelope was in my mailbox. I yelped.

Everything was the same as before except for the stamp, a tiny bushel of raspberries with leaves that resembled poison ivy . . . I dashed through a door, slammed and locked it behind me, ripped opened the envelop with my fingers and speed-read the message inside of it.

I have a message for you.

I yelped again. Then, sighing, I sat down at a desk. I rubbed my eyes with my knuckles until my eyes were red-rimmed and veiny and leaking, so I removed a little bottle of eye drops from a drawer and applied three drops in each eye, waited for my eyes to feel better, returned the eye drops to the drawer and turned to the computer keyboard on the desktop, which I stared at for several minutes before attacking it with my fingers and typing my own message and printing it out. It read:

Fine. What is the message?

After removing the slip of paper with my message on it from a printer tray, I folded it up and slipped it into an envelope. On the front of the envelope I wrote in neat cursive handwriting the nameless return address I had come to know by rote, and above it, in big angry letters, I wrote the word:

YOU

I licked and sealed the envelope. I put a stamp on it. On the stamp was an anteater, with a long sniffing trunk, apparently looking around for some ants.

I deposited the envelope in my mailbox and threw up its red metal flag. Then I folded my arms across my chest and began tapping my foot against the earth.

5

An envelope was in my mailbox. An envelope! I removed it, zipped through a door. After I read the message I sat down at a desk and typed and printed out my own message and folded it and sealed it and sent it off. I waited. I looked in my mailbox. An envelope there. I grabbed it and on the other side of a door opened and read it . . . wrote and sent a message back . . . waited . . . read another message, sent another message, waited . . . found, read, wrote, sent, waited, waited. The correspondence persisted for weeks. Finally I got tired and decided to take a shower and a nap, a long one. When I woke I heated up some water and made a cup of Nescafé, savoring the bitter, alive smell.

On a couch I sipped my coffee and reflected on the correspondence, trying not to think about my mailbox, which, as my nap had lasted for days, I had not visited in days. Still, even now I didn't want to go look inside my mailbox. And I wouldn't. Not for a while, at least. Not until I had finished my coffee, at least . . .
The correspondence went something like this, the first message being the one I received after I sent my first message:

I don't understand.

What don't you understand?

Your message.

How is it possible to not understand my message? I believe my message was fairly clear.

You should not believe in things.

Well, I do believe in things.

That much is clear.

Unlike my message, evidently.

Evidently.

Fine, I retract my message. Pretend you never received it.

I'm afraid I can't do that.

Why?

I'm allergic to pretending. If I pretend to do anything I'll break out in hives and pass out.

That's a lie.

You have the right to call it a lie. Yes, you have that right.

I know I do. I don't need you to tell me what my rights are.

Of course you don't.

This is getting us nowhere.

Nowhere is as fine a place as any to be.

You know what I mean.

Do I?

Yes, you do.

How do you know if I know what you mean?

Look, knock it off. I want to talk about your message. Okay?

Okay. If that's what you want.

It's what I want. Now, in regards to your original message and my original response to it, allow me to rephrase myself.

You can rephrase yourself, or you can not rephrase yourself. It makes no difference to me.

Don't be a snot.

I'm not being a snot.

Yes you are.

You calling me a snot doesn't make me a snot.

Are you going to allow me to rephrase myself or not?

What did I say?

I forgot.

I said go ahead and rephrase yourself. Or don't. Who cares?

If I don't rephrase myself, are you going to continue sending me your original message?

Yes. No. I don't know.

What kind of answer is that?

No kind. Answers are answers.

Bull.

Bull yourself.

This is idiotic. I'm going to rephrase myself.

As I said, do whatever you want.

I'm going to. You sent me a message, the same message, four times. It read: I have a message for you. Now if this message of yours can be taken at face value, and I think it can, it seems to me that you have a message for me, in addition to the message alerting me to the fact that you have a message for me. In other words, I will be expecting to receive a message from you in the future that semantically, morphologically, syntactically and phonetically reads differently, if only slightly, than your original message, the one I received from you, once again, four times in the past, in a seeming attempt to drive home your point, which has not only been driven home, but up my ass. So. You say you have a message for me. What is the message?

Ah.

Ah what? What do you mean, Ah?

I mean I understand you now.

Really?

Yes, really.

And?

The message is just that.

Just what? Just what is the message?

6

Three cups of Nescafé later . . . I was outside staring at my mailbox, my caffeine-ridden face twitching like an insect. I reached out to open it, second guessed myself. Second-guessed myself three more times and opened the mailbox.

Inside was an envelope. The stamp . . .

. . . slunk through a door . . .

. . . In a bathroom I used my teeth to open the envelope and spit the torn-off end in the nearest trash receptacle. I was sitting on a toilet. I waited a little before pulling out the envelope's contents. Then I stopped waiting . . . Inside the envelope was a slip of paper. Following a brief pause, during which I groaned in relief, I opened it.

There was a message on the slip of paper. It read:

I have a message for you.

BOYERAQUERI BUBBOLIFITICUS'S BODY

Boyeraqueri Bubbolifiticus is very ugly-looking in that rather than hair growing out of his skin he has hair-sized clones of Marlon Brando, except on his head and face, which is shaggy with clones of Michael Wincott, an underrated actor with a smoke-scraped voice who almost invariably plays a villain. There is also his ugly name, Boyeraqueri Bubbolifiticus, which sounds more like a disease than a man's name; but whenever he introduces himself he usually just says, "I'm Bob," and leaves it at that, not knowing how to pronounce Boyeraqueri Bubbolifiticus anyway.
Boyeraqueri Bubbolifiticus is not a particularly insecure or vain man and he does not actively seek out the acclaim of his peers. Still, he would much rather have hair on his body instead of little Marlon Brandos and Michael Wincotts, if only to get a little peace and quiet. But if he could have it any way, he would have nothing at all, not a hair or actor or anything on his body, he would be smooth, smooth, smooth! All he had to do was shave his body from head to toe. And he would shave his body from head to toe. He shaved it every morning, early, while the Brandos and Wincotts were still asleep.
Outside Boyeraqueri Bubbolifiticus's window an elephant pigeon tread air and shat.
Inside Boyeraqueri Bubbolifiticus's window Boyeraqueri Bubbolifiticus undressed and removed shaving cream and a Gillette SensorExcel razor from a bathroom drawer. He stepped into a large bathtub and delicately, very delicately, so very delicately that not even the lightest of his sleepers would wake, wet himself down with a warm washcloth, then applied a light film of shaving cream to his legs, genitals, ass, stomach, chest, forearms, armpits, neck, face, eyebrows and head. Then he began shaving.
As the first stripe of Marlon Brandos was removed from his lower left calf everybody was jarred awake by the shaved off Brandos' squeak-screams of agony. "Stella!" carped a patch of groggy Brandos located on the back of Boyeraqueri Bubbolifiticus's hand, the one holding the razor, and this sparked a wave of protests and complaints, from Brandos and Wincotts alike (albeit the Wincotts were less aggressive than the Brandos), to ripple back and forth across Boyeraqueri Bubbolifiticus's body.
Unfazed, Boyeraqueri Bubbolifiticus kept on shaving, cutting off a hundred Marlon Brandos at the kneecaps with each swipe of his razor and then washing the razor off beneath the bathroom faucet. "The horror, the horror!" the Brandos gurgled as, spurting and gesticulating, they were scalded by a gush of hot water that pushed them into the bathtub drain. The Wincotts, in contrast, arbitrarily gurgled lines from Strange Days, The Crow, 1492: Conquest of Paradise, Dead Man and Along Came a Spider, all films in which the real Michael Wincott appears.
It took Boyeraqueri Bubbolifiticus an hour to shave himself in his entirety. When he was finished, he washed what corpses remained out of the bathtub and then sat down in the bathtub, and closed his eyes. Every single one of his pores was bleeding and he had to wait for the bleeding to stop. It took another hour. During that hour Boyeraqueri Bubbolifiticus had a dream about a dish rag. The dish rag had marinated itself in a special substance and when it jumped on his face it wiped the face off. All that was left on Boyeraqueri Bubbolifiticus's head was a ruff of hair and two ears and a smooth patch of skin where his facial features used to be. He wanted to tell the dish rag to give him back his face, but he didn't have a mouth. This made him want to sniffle and cry, but he had no nose and no eyes or tear ducts either. He had some ears, though, and so he waited for the dish rag to say something to him; hopefully it would explain why it had jumped on and stolen his face. Then he remembered that dish rags don't have mouths and he did the only thing he could do: curl up in a ball and roll away . . .
His entire body winedark and a bit crusty in places, Boyeraqueri Bubbolifiticus opened his eyes. He stood and turned the shower on, and showered. When he was finished he dried off and took two Tetracycline capsules and with a washcloth nursed the spots on his body that were still bleeding. There were many spots, but eventually the blood stopped flowing . . . and a permagrin ravaged Boyeraqueri Bubbolifiticus's face.
"I'm Bob," permagrinned Boyeraqueri Bubbolifiticus as he inspected his smooth, smooth, smooth body in the mirror. He was very happy. But how long would he remain very happy? Not very long. No more than forty-five minutes. So Boyeraqueri Bubbolifiticus, intent on enjoying and savoring his happiness while it lasted, began prancing back and forth in front of his window, and sometimes he would pause and do breakdance moves, or do impersonations of politicians, or pick his pets up—he had a beaver, an algae-eater and a two piglets—by the tails and swing them overhead like lassos, or just flex his muscles. There was no longer an elephant pigeon treading air and shitting outside his window, but there were a bunch of people, about thirty or so, all tied to balloons by strings wrapped around their ears, all straight-faced and blinking at the little performance.
Forty-four minutes later Boyeraqueri Bubbolifiticus sensed his smooth-bodied glee coming to an end. Sighing, he turned away from his window and went over to his couch and sat down and turned on his tv, and waited for it to happen.
This is what happened: Thousands and thousands of infinitesimal Marlon Brando and Michael Wincott heads started poking up out of Boyeraqueri Bubbolifiticus's skin, making him all itchy, but he didn't itch, itching would only make it worse, so he continued to watch tv, there was a Bewitched marathon on and he was in love with Elizabeth Montgomery, and as he sat there loving Elizabeth Montgomery, the Marlon Brando mouths on his body and the Michael Wincott mouths on his face and head were exposed, and these mouths attacked Boyeraqueri Bubbolifiticus with the foulest language, rendering him nothing less than a loudspeaker of obscenity, and he had to blast the volume on the tv in order to hear Elizabeth Montgomery make her jokes, but he couldn't hear her jokes, his body and head were too loud, so he had to settle for just watching Elizabeth Montgomery smile and move her lips while listening to the abuse that was raining down upon him from within him, difficult to make out since so many mouths were squeak-screaming at once, but he could make out the odd "Sonuvabitch asshole killer!" and before Boyeraqueri Bubbolifiticus knew it the torsos of the Brandos and Wincotts were up, torsos that flailed and shook their arms and fists, beating against Boyeraqueri Bubbolifiticus's flesh as hard as they possibly could so that in a very short time period he was not only a loudspeaker of obscenity but a giant bruise too, and bruises pulse with pain, pulse, pulse, pulse with pain, and Boyeraqueri Bubbolifiticus was no longer very happy, he was very very unhappy, especially when the Brandos and Wincotts were fully grown again, up to their knees in his skin, and in addition to beating on and swearing at him they started quoting lines from Shakespeare and driving their landlord, as it were, who had overdosed on Shakespeare as a young man and couldn't even stand to hear the name Shakespeare uttered, to the edge of insanity, and then over the edge, straight into the pit of psychosis, at the bottom of which Elizabeth Montgomery was getting gang-fondled by a slavering wolfpack of genies and liking it, and a horrified, breathless, pain-charged Boyeraqueri Bubbolifiticus passed out, free fell into a cold hard sleep that terminated in morning, early in the morning, when Boyeraqueri Bubbolifiticus's body was still asleep.

CLASSROOM DYNAMICS

Situated between floors 863 and 924 of the Ameliabedelia Spacescraper are the offices and classrooms of Pseudofolliculitis State University. Roughly 20,000 students attend the university per year, and exactly 200 professors teach there. Most of these professors are more concerned with their scholarly output than they are with pedagogy. Most of them, in fact, could care less about their students' intellectual well-being, preoccupied as they are with churning out criticism and theory that absolutely nobody (including the professors themselves) reads and that has no bearing whatsoever on the social, political, cultural or economic condition of Pseudofolliculitis City. Fortunately, not all of the professors at PSU practice this brand of absurdity. Dr. Bobby Lee Beebody, for instance, cares so much about his students that he can barely sleep at night. He worries about their intellect. He worries about their emotional disposition, too. The thought of one of his students being depressed or saddened depresses and saddens him. Even if they were irretrievably idiotic.

One day Dr. Beebody decided to start hugging his students hello and goodbye.

He waited for them at the door of his classroom with a friendly smile on his face and his arms wide open. As the students trickled in, he wrapped his arms around them and gave each of them a warm, loving squeeze. He did the same thing after class as they trickled out. There were no sexual undertones to these hugs, and at no time did his hands slip out of place when he was hugging one of his more attractive lady students and grab or spank a piece of ass. Not that most of his lady students would have minded. Dr. Beebody was a tall, dark, handsome drink of water who possessed an aquiline face, bright white teeth, immaculately groomed obsidian hair and a keen fashion sense—the complete antithesis of his PSU colleagues, who, for the most part, looked and smelled something like giant pieces of tumbleweed. Still, there were a number of his students who were less than excited about being hugged by their professor, especially the frat boys. Dr. Beebody embraced them and they stood there as if something uninvited had just been shoved up their asses—frozen stiff, eyes wide, lips twisted, arms flush against their sides as they breathed in the scent of his stylish cologne. Every now and then a student would try to sneak past the professor while he was hugging somebody else, but he always managed to get his hands on the would-be escape artist. If it was before class, he would simply waltz over to the student's desk, lean over and give him his due, whispering things in his ear like "It's alright" and "I know, I know" and "Everything's going to be ok." If it was after class, he would chase the students down the hallway until he caught them. Once he chased a frat boy halfway across campus, from floor 864 to 892, and when he finally caught him, he hugged him so tightly and for so long that the little bastard passed out and died in his arms. It was a devastating blow, a terrible tragedy. Dr. Beebody was just trying to be nice. The last thing he wanted to do was kill a student that didn't deserve it. But accidents happen, and anyway, it is a professor's right to exterminate a student whenever he wishes. In the meantime, he would grieve the frat boy's passing and continue to administer as many hugs to his students as possible, making sure not to squeeze their fragile bodies with an excess of verve and tenderheartedness.

Killing a student is one thing. But hugging one? That's quite another. It wasn't long before Dr. Beebody found himself sitting in front of Dean Dinglewigger.

The dean exhibited the pot-bellied physique and the old school fashion statement exhibited by all of P.C.'s deans. For additional effect, he had also surgically reconstructed his face in the graven image of James Dean.

The two men stared across the dean's untidy desk at each other for half a minute of silence. It was not an uncomfortable silence. It wasn't a comfortable one either. In the background, a Muzak rendition of a Daryl Hall & John Oats ballad was softly playing.

"Hello," Dr. Beebody finally said.

"Hello," Dean Dinglewigger replied. Both men spoke in dull monotones—the only way academics are allowed to speak to one another according to The Official PSU Faculty & Administrator Rulebook. "Personality" can only be exhibited in or near the classroom and in select public zones.

"Stop hugging your students," said the dean squarely.

"Why?" said Dr. Beebody.

"Do I really need to justify that question with an answer? That question doesn't deserve an answer."

"Maybe it doesn't deserve one. But it wants one. All questions want answers."

"What about rhetorical questions?"

"Them, too. They just won't admit it."

A bitter, annoyed expression tried to weasel its way onto Dean Dinglewigger's face, but he nipped it in the bud before it had a chance to flourish so as not to break The Law. "Please refrain from that sort of nonsense, sir. Please make an effort to not bring that sort of assholery to this table. Now then. You're freaking out your students. Stop hugging them. Leave them be. Don't touch them. Don't lay a finger on them. Am I being perfectly clear?"

Dr. Beebody nodded his blank face. The nod did not signify obedience. It signified a simple acknowledgment of a piece of information that had been conveyed to him. "I see," was his response. Ten seconds of dead air followed.

The professor said, "The thing is, I think my students need hugs. They don't work very hard and most of them are complete morons, but that doesn't mean that they don't need a little sensitivity and, dare I say, love. In fact, I think giving them hugs will make them more inclined to transcend their idiocy and take at least a moderate interest in cultivating their mongoloid intellects. My students need help, and I'm in a position to help them. That's the score. I've got hugs to give, Dean Dinglewigger, and I aim to give them."

The dean stared vacantly at the professor. "You're fired," he said.

"Really?" Dr. Beebody responded, as if he had just been told he had toothpaste resin on his lips.

"If you hug another student, yes, really. That's the end of this retarded conversation. Please get out of my sight. Please do that, sir."

Dr. Beebody ruminatively twitched his lips. He nodded and said "I see" again, obediently this time. Then he puckered up his lips, widened his eyes, said "Well then," stood up, cleared his throat, glanced absent-mindedly around the office, smiled pleasantly, said "Goodbye," nodded again, and left.

Later that day, in Dr. Beebody's PB (Philosophy of the Bedroom) 310E course . . .

"Good afternoon, studentry," announced the professor from behind his podium. He spoke in a detached voice, his chin titled up a notch. "Thank you for showing up. You may have noticed that, on your way into our classroom this afternoon, you did not receive your usual warm greeting. It has been brought to my attention that said warm greetings are, in so many words, neither well-received, nor productive on an emotional level. Whereas I tend to disagree with this notion in every respect, I have no choice but to respect and acknowledge it in order to avoid being skidrowed. Hence there will be no more of this touchy-feely hoo-ha. FYI."

Dr. Beebody's students blinked at him. A few of the frat boys sighed in relief, albeit guardedly. To sigh too conspicuously during a class was an indication of boredom, no matter what the sigh actually indicated, and if they spotted it, professors had every right to murder the guilty (or, possibly, not guilty) party in any way he or she saw fit.

"Right," said the professor. He folded his arms behind his back and walked out from behind his podium. "Right," he said again. "Well. Well then. Let's get right to it, shall we? Okay then. Yesterday we were discussing the psychodynamics of Hitler's desire for his young niece to squat over and urinate on him. Let's begin today by thinking about this enchanting act of perversion in Lacanian terms. I am particularly interested in the way in which the phallus manifests itself here. Who can explain to me what constitutes the phallus according to Lacan?"

None of the students raised their hands.

"Anyone? Can anyone tell me how Lacan defines the phallus?"

The students blinked at him.

Dr. Beebody stroked his square chin. He buried his face in his hand and, with his thumb and middle finger, stroked his temples. He stroked them for over half a minute, praying to God that somebody would speak up of their own volition. Nobody did. So: "Mr. Bitchslapper? Care to fill us in?" He released his face from his hand and stared pointedly at the student.

Pendleton Bitchslapper III (a.k.a. PB3) was one of six frat boys in PB 310E. A ninth-year senior at PSU, he was president of the Phi Gamma Dipcup fraternity, the proud owner of a 1.8 gradepoint average, and a pothead extraordinaire; he had been high for so long, in fact, that his eyes has devolved into two small Xs that seemed to have been carved into his bloated head.

When Dr. Beebody asked his question, PB3 had of course not been listening. He had been daydreaming about having an orgy with the harem of sorority girls he kept as slaves in his bathroom closet. Dr. Beebody had to repeat himself. "Excuse me? Mr. Bitchslapper? Answer the question, if you please."

PB3 snapped out of his daydream and into the real world. "What question?" he asked, his X-eyes cringing like sphincters.

"Wrong answer," replied the professor. In one fluid motion he reached inside of his pitch black zoot suit, removed a large throwing star, wound it up and winged it at PB3. The weapon nailed the frat boy in the eye. The eye exploded in a gruesome potpourri of blood, brains and bong resin. PB3 screamed uncontrollably in his seat for a moment, his body twitching and gesticulating, then abruptly clammed up and died. The killing took place in slow motion except for when the throwing star was just about to strike PB3 in the eye, at which point things slipped into ultraslow motion. After the killing, a hulking janitor in a neon orange jumpsuit crawled out of a trap door in the back of the room, picked up and stuffed PB3's corpse in a trash bag, and disappeared back into the trap door.

Dr. Beebody closed his eyes and rubbed them with his thumb and forefinger. He sighed dramatically. To say the least, he wasn't a big fan of killing his students, despite their being allergic to being educated. But The Law was The Law, and if a student wasn't holding up his or her end of the bargain, it was incumbent upon all PSU professors to do away with them, ideally without apprehension or remorse. Dr. Beebody almost always experienced apprehension and remorse, but he never let on to his colleagues that he did. Still, his colleagues knew he was a big softy; after all, he had murdered fewer students at PSU than any other academic in his department.

He stopped rubbing his eyes. "Right," he said. "Now then. Where were we? Yes. Lacan. The Phallus. Who has the answer? It's not a difficult question if you're willing to not be a difficult person. How does Lacan define the phallus?"

His students were stone sculptures in their seats. On average they witnessed five, six deaths a day. They were no strangers to death, but that didn't mean they wanted to be death's friends.

Dr. Beebody cleared his throat. Nothing. He cleared it again. Nothing.

"Boy," he said. "I despise calling on people. I wish somebody would just answer the question so I don't have to call on one of you. Why won't somebody just raise their hand? That would make me happy. It might make you happy, too, if you give it a try. So. Who wants to be happy?"

No response at first. The students sat there with forearms and hands flat on their desks and eyes locked on their laps, and the professor unleashed a series of long, melodramatic sighs. Then a hand rose into the air. The hand contained long, thin fingers and belonged to Ms. Gretchen Blase, an average-looking young woman who wore average-looking outfits and hairdos and was, generally speaking, an average student. Her fingers trembled in fear as they stood up in the air. Dr. Beebody wanted to walk over to those fingers and hug them with his hand, assuring them that everything would be all right if only Ms. Blase managed to respond to the question that had been posed to the class without making a complete ass out of herself. "Ah!" he exclaimed. "Ms. Blase! That's a good thing, raising that hand of yours. Please tell the class what's on your mind."

Ms. Blase slowly lowered her hand. She used her pinky finger to push her not unfashionable (but not entirely fashionable) spectacles up her forgetful nose. In a voice that was not too loud yet not too soft, she said, "For Lacan, the phallus is s-s-slippery. I mean, it's not a fixed thing. I mean, it has the, uh, power to change. Uhm. To change by itself."

Dr. Beebody's made a satisfied frog face. "Fine, Ms. Blase. That's just fine. That wasn't so hard, was it? Lacan's phallus has the power to change by itself. Yes indeed. Now that you've set the scene for us, we can begin to flesh this matter out. You're a good person, Ms. Blase. I'm not just saying that. Actually I am just saying that, because you're more than a good person. You're a great person. A spectacular person. I love you. I love you madly. And I will continue to love you until the end of time, if that's all right with you."

Ms. Blase smiled a quick, confused smile.

Throughout the course of the class, Dr. Beebody told a number of other students he loved them. He told a few of them that he was in love with them. Some of them didn't even respond intelligently to a question; the professor just thought they looked sad, so every now and then he would point at them at random and announce, "I am in love with you, Mr. or Ms. So-and-so." And when the class was finally over, he stood by the door with his arms folded behind his back and told each individual student he loved them as they passed him by. This behavior flooded over into his other classes and lasted a good two weeks before he was sitting across a desk from the visage of James Dean again. In the background, a Muzak rendition of a Quiet Riot ballad was softly playing.

"Hello," monotoned Dr. Beebody.

"Hello," monotoned Dean Dinglewigger.

"Is everything all right?"

"No, it's not."

"Is there a problem?"

"Yes, there is."

"Really?"

"Yes, really."

"Really, you say. Well. I hope it's nothing serious. Serious problems are often problematic. I wonder what it is. Does it have anything to do with me?"

The dean glared at the professor with blank eyes. "Quit telling your students you love them, goddamn it."

"What? I don't know what you're talking about."

"Yes you do. Knock it off."

"Knock what off?"

The dean glared at him again. The professor glared back, nibbling on his lip. Finally the professor said, "Why can't I tell my students I love them? I'm just trying to make them feel good. What's the harm in that? Most of my students probably never hear anybody say they love them. Who loves people nowadays? Love is an outmoded concept. That's one of the reasons young people are such imbeciles, in my opinion. Nobody loves them. Nobody loves them, I say."

Dean Dinglewigger resisted the temptation to flex his jaw. He reached into a big tin can of lard sitting on his desk and scooped out a handful of it. As he dutifully ran it through his lustrous hair, he spoke to the professor in a perfectly candid, perfectly sedated voice. "Dr. Beebody, I hope you can hear me. It doesn't matter if anybody loves your students. What matters is that you're acting like a fucking weirdo. Students don't want their professors telling them they love them. They want their professors to treat them like the pieces of rotten meat they are. You know this, Dr. Beebody. I don't understand why you're attempting to disrupt the system. I imagine it stems from personal problems. But that's none of my concern." Having spread the handful of lard across the entirety of his hairdo, the dean removed an oversized comb from his desk drawer and began to brush his hairdo into place with long, slow strokes. "Get your shit together, sir. This is your last chance. I realize you have tenure, but as you and every other professor at PSU knows, tenure doesn't mean a goddamn thing. Its purpose isn't to provide security, it's to provide the illusion of security, and while all professors are aware of this, all professors naturally disavow it in order to maintain a relatively congenial disposition. Point of fact: if I so desire, I can dismiss you at the drop of a derby hat. You're not a bad educator. I wouldn't go so far as to call you a good one, but you're not a bad one. You need to deal with this infantile emotional crisis of yours and put it to sleep. No more hugging, no more I-love-yous. No more emotional outpourings of any kind." The dean paused to apply another helping of lard to his hairdo. This time he combed it in with more flair and enthusiasm. When he spoke again, however, it was in the same anesthetized tone. "Bottom line: you have issues, Dr. Beebody. Issues that need to be worked out. The best course of action you could take, in my opinion, is to go on a minor killing spree. Weed out every last sub-par student under your liege. I know there are a number of sub-par students in your classes that continue to live and breath, not to mention that you own the lowest murder rate in the department. End that, if you please. I promise you you'll feel a little better. Additionally, it's about time you produced a piece of worthwhile writing. If I'm not mistaken, the last thing you published was some short story in some obscure magazine published by some middle-aged wacko who lives in his parent's basement. What was the name of it? It doesn't matter, it was atrocious and embarrassing. You need to write something that matters, and that isn't atrocious and embarrassing. You are, after all, a representative of this university. Start acting like one. Fiction is the stuff of village idiots. Write a piece of decent literary criticism, for once, and become a productive member of society. Do it, or get lost. What do you think?" The question was both in reference to the directive and to the glistening pompadour that was now sitting on top of Dean Dinglewigger's head like a crouching, well-groomed vulture.

Dr. Beebody blinked innocently at the hairdo. He smiled. He nodded. He smacked his lips. He said, "Well." He smacked his lips again. He nodded again. He smiled again. He blinked innocently at the hairdo again.

He rose out of his chair, cleared his throat, tipped his head, cocked his head, cracked his neck, scratched his overlip, made a shrugging gesture, freeze-framed the gesture for a good three seconds, waved his finger in the air, said "Very well," said "Goodbye then," nodded, nodded again, nodded again, and left.

Dean Dinglewigger shook his head and returned to the copy of People!!! magazine he had been reading before Dr. Beebody had interrupted him.

The next day, Pseudofolliculitis State University was soaked in darkness; a black cloud of towerfog had wrapped itself around the upper portion of the Ameliabedelia Spacescraper. Dr. Bobby Lee Beebody gazed listlessly out a restroom window at the darkness, admiring the flashes of electricity that would periodically spark up. He thought he saw the visage of his frozen, screaming face in one of these electric flashes. Then he realized that he was not looking out the window, but in the mirror . . .

. . . Dr. Beebody walked down the hallway to his IS (Introduction to Scatology) 220 course in slow motion. He was wearing a pinstripe gangster suit, a fedora with a wide brim, and a plastic press-on handlebar mustache. He walked with the simulated grace and purpose of a dandy. In one hand he carried a black briefcase, in the other a black Tommy gun. The students that passed by him either made an effort not to look at him or looked at him with wide, trembling eyes. The music playing in the background was a souped-up, techno version of Tom Jones' Delilah. It was playing so loud, the Ameliabedelia Spacescraper quaked from head to toe . . .

The scene slipped from slowtime into realtime as Dr. Beebody emerged into his classroom. As always before class began, his students were acting like a bunch of mental patients. Most of them were bitching at each other at the top of their lungs about various trivialities. A few of them were standing on top of their desks impersonating syphilitic apes. Others systematically banged their heads against the classroom's whitewalls. Two took turns slapping each other across the face. When the professor walked in, however, everybody shaped up, shut up, dove into their seats, sat up and stared straight ahead. Dr. Beebody was all business. He didn't even look at his students out of his eye corners as he goose-stepped over to his podium and situated himself behind it.

"What's up his ass?" the yuppie mouthed in silence to the skaterat sitting next to him. Too scared-stiff to acknowledge him, the skaterat pretended that she didn't hear him. She pushed out her pierced lips and rolled her eyes to the ceiling, as if experiencing a deep thought.

The estranged yuppie mouthed, "Can you hear me?"

"I can read lips, Nancy boy," intoned Dr. Beebody, and aimed a stern, willful gaze at the troublemaker. Unlike the smaller PB 310E, IS 220 was a seminar course that accommodated 150 students and the professor knew very few of their names. He generally identified and addressed them in terms of their social image. Whenever he called on somebody to answer a question, for instance, he would point at that somebody and say things like "Can you fill us in, wigger?" or "How about it, butch lesbian?" or "Would the piece of white trash sitting in the back row be so kind as to give us an answer?"

The classroom darkened and an unseen spotlight fell on the yuppie like an anvil from the sky. He winced. He glanced in every direction at high speed. "I'm sorry!" he exclaimed.

The professor shrugged. "It's too late for that. Die, scum." He dropped his briefcase on the floor, pointed the Tommy gun at the yuppie and fired a round of shots in slow motion. The yuppie was shredded to pieces by the gunfire. So was the hillbilly sitting behind him. Blood splashed all over the students sitting in their vicinity as if thrown at them out of large buckets. Sound of slung mud and choking gasps . . .

As the spotlight slowly grew in size until the classroom was entirely illuminated again, the janitor appeared, cleaned up the mess, disappeared.

"Oops," said Dr. Beebody in reference to the accidental murder of the hillbilly. He shrugged again. "Oh well. That's the breaks, I suppose." He carefully placed the smoking Tommy gun on top of his podium and folded his arms behind his back. At least ten of his students had hot gore dripping down their faces; a few of them dry-heaved in disgust, some twitched psychopathically, but they all kept their composure, and they all kept their seats. "Good morning, studentry. I apologize for the seemingly off-the-cuff murders, but lately I haven't been feeling so hot. It seems that I've got a kind of a problem. The problem is, well . . . you. More specifically, the problem is that you're a bunch of retards, and I don't understand you dumbasses. That's the problem, in a nutshell. Please don't take it the wrong way. There is no doubt in my mind that each and every one of you is a worthless douche bag and always will be, but that's not to say that I don't like you all very much. I do like you, and I want you to be happy. That's all. That's all I wanted to say, for the most part. Actually I wanted to say a lot more. But what's the point? All words do is confuse people. The more words that come out of your mouth, the more you are apt to cause a miscommunication. People should stop talking to each other, I think. The world would be a much saner place to live in, I think. Well then. I guess that's all for today. Any questions?"

The professor raised an eyebrow. Most of his students stared at their laps, but some raised their hands. One student's arm writhed like an electrified snake as she went, "Me! Me! Me!"

Dr. Beebody ignored them. "Okay then," he whispered. He picked the Tommy gun back up, inspected it briefly, sniffed, pursed his lips, blinked, smiled a crooked smile, blinked again, sniffed again, cleared his throat, said "Yes indeed," clicked his tongue, sighed, and fired.

. . . realtime slipped into slowtime slipped into fasttime slipped into slowtime slipped into . . .

Later, as the janitor busied himself with a mop, a waterhose and a chainsaw, Dr. Beebody removed a pen and a piece of paper from his briefcase. He placed the paper on his podium, clicked the pen open, and stared cockeyed at the ceiling for a moment while chewing on his tongue. Then he began to write.

"The postmodern body is always-already a desiring-machine produced and controlled by the schizophrenic mediascape that encompasses it," he wrote . . .

© 2003 D. Harlan Wilson