The Bully Business Professor

The asshat in an ascot quoted Foucault. He made faculty senate holy hell. I think he was in English, maybe History; I knew he wasn’t in athletics!

Anyway, motherfucker just loved the drone of his self-important voice. How about the dulcet tone of a head slap?

I snapped and pummeled him. An Engineering professor high-fived me before public safety came.

At my hearing, I learned he was old money, Ivy League—his mom and dad were philanthropists. He smirked when I got suspended.

Afterwards, I gave him a super wedgy and nasty pink belly.

That’s my story.

Paper or Plastic?

From Guest Contributor JD Clapp

On Loving

What happens when you keep uttering the same word? One moment, it has a meaning. The next moment, it stops being a word.

Familiarity is the flourishing ground for intimacy. You repeat a word over and over so that you can describe its curves and contours, its light and luster. Rolling it inside your mouth smooths its jutting edges. Running your tongue playfully over it changes its tone. Mixing it up with other words makes it sway to strange rhythms. Wrapped in the warmth of your spit, it tries to germinate.

And, snap!

Familiarity is the flourishing ground for morbidity.

From Guest Contributor Aparna Rajan

Aparna is a research scholar and an aspiring writer, currently living in Mumbai, India.

A Netflix Original

Two Scandinavian dudes set out in a vintage VW microbus to prove the secretary-general of the United Nations was the victim of assassination. But then, by accident, they discover an attempt to eliminate entirely the smoking of cigarettes after sex. The Scandinavians meet a leader of an underground militia who says that while that’s his signature on the document, he didn’t write the signature himself. I got to be honest, I was expecting more: maybe a “crime wall,” with photos and red strings and so on; maybe the angel of death promising in a mocking tone to stay in touch.

Howie Good is the author most recently of What It Is and How to Use It from Grey Book Press. He co-edits the journals Unbroken and UnLost.

A Troop Of Mushrooms

Stephanie didn't know who else to call, so she called the exterminator. She was vague over the phone, preferring him to see the infestation for himself. His condescending tone annoyed her.

When he arrived, the condescension immediately turned to terror.

"I've never seen anything like this before."

So they brought in an expert from the university. He surveyed Stephanie's house and proclaimed it a colony, though he admitted he'd never seen human-sized toadstools before. He suspected they were deadly.

Stephanie wasn't paying attention to his diagnosis. She couldn't get over the fact he kept pronouncing fungi with a soft gee.

The Mortar

“Captain Stevens you normally don’t get so upset by attacks, what’s under your skin?” Sergeant Cordova asked in a mock-respectful tone.

“I was watching 1408,” I responded.

“The horror movie with Matthew Broderick?”

“It was John Cusack, but yes.”

“It’s based on the Stephen King story?"

“Yes.”

“Alone, at night, in Iraq?”

“Yes.”

“A few life tips, Sir... don’t give your ex-wife the keys to your Camaro, don’t dismount after getting hit by an unknown attacker, and the most important...”

“What’s the most important thing?”

“Don’t watch a horror movie alone, at night, in Iraq, with all due respect...Sir.”

From Guest Contributor Terry Brunt