A total, fucking, bloody, dripping, waste

“Anyway,” he continued, “the long and short of it is that I’ll be invited to rewrite one more time. Or, to put it another way, you’ll hint yet again that it’s time for me to consider a nice job in … oh…shoe repair or something. Only, this time, I’ve finally gotten the message.”

His red and yellow eyes shifted to some point behind her. “Ah,” he said, “here comes the rest of the party. Let’s join them, shall we?”

Lester took her arm and she was too startled to resist. He turned her easily and she found that coming up the stairs behind her were, indeed, the rest of the dissertation committee…Morris in all his obesity, Putridrine with her disconcertingly elfin features, following them six or seven graduate students.

They reached the landing and, at the sight of him, the professors stopped in shock. The graduate students, their way blocked, bunched up in a confused little knot. One girl, who’d been looking over shoulder while she spoke to her friend behind her, bounced off Morris’ copious posterior and nearly fell. With a squeak, she teetered backwards, but then one of the other young women steadied her.

Lester seemed wholly unaware of, or unconcerned with, his effect. Instead, he greeted them jovially. “Hello, hello! Everyone’s here. Superb!” He gestured at the door of the conference room. “Let’s begin, shall we? I’m eager to chat with you all.”

He held the door open and the small group filed in past him, each nervously glancing at his bizarre features and dress. Or else, they stared stiffly ahead, pretending nothing was different.

Forrester was the last to go in. She passed him with something a little like a shudder, then found a seat for herself around the table.

Dear Lord! He was mad. That had to be it. Or on drugs. Or something. There was no other explanation.

She knew she had to take charge somehow. “Well, uh,” she said, “I guess we should get started.”

“Absolutely,” Lester chirped from where he sat on the other side of the table. “Let’s do begin. Who wants to be first?”

She glanced at the other members of the committee. They were still staring at him, blankly.

“Come, come,” he urged them. “Speak up. I know you’re out there. I hear you breathing.” He laughed at his own joke.

Morris cleared his throat. Someone’s chair squeaked.

“Please,” he said, smiling. “One of you must have some nasty thing to share. Maybe you, Professor Putridrine?”

She looked at him. “I, that is, ah . . .”

“Let me see if I can help.” He gave them all another of his newly dazzling smiles, all pearly teeth. “I’m sure that you’ve read the manuscript and concluded that it is based on a severely out of date interpretative apparatus in that it fails to employ the criteria of Race, Class, and Gender within a postmodern context.”

Her eyes bulged. She glanced down at her notes, then at him again. “How did you know what I…”

“Just a guess. Anyway, my response to your critique is that, by Golly, you’re absolutely right.”

“I…I am?

“Yep. No use of Race, Class, Gender, or Postmodernism. In fact, that’s just the tip of ye ole iceberg. The whole dissertation is a total waste. A total, fucking, bloody, dripping, waste.”