"Greetings, hello and welcome students!" In her grey jerzee, the Canadian professor was a jolly and friendly sight, more like a colonial aunt than an intellectual force to be reckoned with. As the shuffling of folders, the clicking of pens and the mumbles of conversation gradually diminished, inquisitorial eyes surrounded the new guest to their semi-circle of tables. These judgemental eyes seemed to be weighing Pamela Heartshorn with post-pubescent glimmers of arrogance and superiority. But Pamela had a secret weapon, in the form of a newly minted Medieval History PhD.
Soon she would be DOCTOR Heartshorn. Soon she would no longer have to support herself through this hack literature. And yes, she was totally willing to admit the hack nature of her work, though not the intellectual inferiority of their authors. But she was going mainstream, she would publish papers, she would discard these Tender Romance Pink Covers with their misleading blurbs and infuriatingly inaccurate covers. The subtle drops in financial support had not been weighed out by a reduced readership, but she knew that this lifestyle could not support her indefinitely.
She surveyed the room, her typical responses and stock-in-trade structuralist quips were vivid in her mind and waiting on her tongue. If things got too heated, or people began to interrogate the work too thoroughly, she would lead the conversation down Proppian avenues but never acknowledge that meddling Radway.
She knew her stuff alright.
"Good morning!" she rattled, cheerily, though by the ashen look on their student faces she guessed they were well aware. To her, there were no specifically identifiable features in their expectant but bleary mass. It was just the same set every year, with a goth or two more. Or whatever they were calling it these days.
"I'm Pamela, but you've no doubt heard of me as Jennifer Heart. I've written over fifty novels in my career under that pseudonym, the latest being Last Dash for Marriage. I'll be willing to answer questions later in the semi-"
The oak-panelled doors of the meeting room slammed open, with a crash and a yelp as they broke the ankle of the student sat in front of them. With an entrance like Nosferatu rising inexorably and impossibly on faded film, HE entered the room.
There were twigs in his wild, almost primal, hair and four days of facial hair. Tucked behind one slender, elfin ear was a single, bent Lambert & Butler. It was either that, or an extremely stale Cheestring. Bloodshot but softly blazing eyes glistened with crackling energy and inadequately distilled ethanol. One hand grasped a clipper with the crude depiction of a toothless tattooed whore (emblazoned with the legend "All The Fun o' The Fair In SouthPort!"), the other a half-glass of an exquisitely blended cocktail of gin and gin.
At least, he thought it was gin. The bottle label had had a red metro symbol on it, if his splintering memory served him correctly. That could just as easily be an indicator of lighter fluid.
A flustered corduroy-clone stuttered, standing from his desk. "You can't just...you know, this is incredibly ru-"
He was cut short by an elegant and tactful response by the intruder, a repartee issued from his yellow-grey teeth delivered in the form of a foul extrusion of bilious liquid: three eighths acid, four eighths paint-stripper, one eighth who on earth knew? The toussle-haired Literature student's stutter turned to a scream as the witty reply cut through both his challenge and his corneas.
"Urp." concluded the intruder, with a flourish. What few patches of his fading quarter-coat that had previously been unstained were now utterly ruined.
Pamela narrowed her eyes.
"Well, I suppose that concludes the seminar." She carefully mused. "Questions?"
"I've got one." slurred the newcomer, enticingly, as he deftly stole the chair of his fallen compatriot after two failed attempts at sitting on it. His voice was a rough buzz that put one in mind of lithe and predatory jungle cats. Lithe and predatory jungle cats being cut in half by rusty chainsaws.
"I've got one."
She merely arched an eyebrow.
"Tell me, Pamela, have you ever loved and lost?"
"Ladies & Gentlemen, Olivier."
She glanced around and indicated to the capitivated room that this was the identity of the one who had so quickly captured their attention. And the loin-based fantasies of every girl in the room. Even the lesbians.
Especially the lesbians.
"And wasn't it such a coincidence that the villian in Last Dash for Marriage was an Oliver?" He sneered, his cruel lips crackling with hostile dehydration.
"N-"
"That one wasn't really a ques-ugh-tion." Olivier belched, exuding a cloud of potent hormones and even more potent reek. His hands had flowed on automatic pilot, swiftly pushing the Lambert between his lips and lighting it after a few sparky attempts.
"This is though; where's my bloody cigarette?"
The professor's face crumpled confusedly. "Surely, surely you know it is already in your mo-" she was silenced by a glare and a shake of the head from Pamela.
Fishing in a pocket, Oliver extruded a rumpled Superkings packet. And a half empty tin of sardines. From it, he exhumed a wet cigarette with what might be the suspicion of mould growing near the filter. Twin eyes swam through layers of confusion and inebriation.
"Fuuuuuuuuuu...sodding Silk Cut."
The second cigarette slotted into his mouth at the opposite cheek, while a lizardly tongue flicked flecks of sizzlingly sexy spittle across four sets of reading notes.
"Now that you've had your nicotine, maybe you'll be leaving, darling." Pamela hinted, forcefully.
"I'll see you tonight, then, dear." He muttered through a mouth that held all the compulsive attractive power to all people in the room as that of a young Shane McGowan.
"But you don't know where I live..." she puzzled.
A violently forceful laugh rose from his decaying lungs like a rising sun and shivered down the spines of every man and woman present, enflaming their already tingling genitals.
"Don't kid yourself, honey, I've spent the last two days living in your shed."
He stood, and shakily made his way back to the doors, giving a valiant and honourly kick to the fallen student on his way.
"Wait." Pamela's imperious tones made him halt.
Olivier scoffed, or maybe just coughed and cocked his head with a grin that lasted for one quiver of a beat before he swept round and plunged at the doors once more.
But before leaving, Pamela knew, he always needed the last word.
Olivier steadied himself against the doors, cracked nails stained with mud and blood clinging to reality and Propping him upright.
"Before I go, let me just say that being in such close-proximity to such a highly sexed archetype gone hideously righteously wrong has consequences. All the men, you are now impotent. And to all the ladies? You now bear my child. You're all now bear my progeny, a whole cluster of chiraz-swilling, crystal-ket-blend kids both speedy and slow all at the same time. Some of them will be still-born. The LUCKY ones will be still born. Except..."
The Professor goggled madly. "I've had an operation. Fibroids. I have no ovaries..."
"...except you." A crooked finger tipped with yellow lighter burns on the nail then selected her from the throng. "Except you.
You're carrying twins."
And with a cackle that let a dribble of petrol falter past his syphilitic-cigarette lips, he drained his glass and carefully rested the remains in the back of his comatose compadre's skull.
Soon she would be DOCTOR Heartshorn. Soon she would no longer have to support herself through this hack literature. And yes, she was totally willing to admit the hack nature of her work, though not the intellectual inferiority of their authors. But she was going mainstream, she would publish papers, she would discard these Tender Romance Pink Covers with their misleading blurbs and infuriatingly inaccurate covers. The subtle drops in financial support had not been weighed out by a reduced readership, but she knew that this lifestyle could not support her indefinitely.
She surveyed the room, her typical responses and stock-in-trade structuralist quips were vivid in her mind and waiting on her tongue. If things got too heated, or people began to interrogate the work too thoroughly, she would lead the conversation down Proppian avenues but never acknowledge that meddling Radway.
She knew her stuff alright.
"Good morning!" she rattled, cheerily, though by the ashen look on their student faces she guessed they were well aware. To her, there were no specifically identifiable features in their expectant but bleary mass. It was just the same set every year, with a goth or two more. Or whatever they were calling it these days.
"I'm Pamela, but you've no doubt heard of me as Jennifer Heart. I've written over fifty novels in my career under that pseudonym, the latest being Last Dash for Marriage. I'll be willing to answer questions later in the semi-"
The oak-panelled doors of the meeting room slammed open, with a crash and a yelp as they broke the ankle of the student sat in front of them. With an entrance like Nosferatu rising inexorably and impossibly on faded film, HE entered the room.
There were twigs in his wild, almost primal, hair and four days of facial hair. Tucked behind one slender, elfin ear was a single, bent Lambert & Butler. It was either that, or an extremely stale Cheestring. Bloodshot but softly blazing eyes glistened with crackling energy and inadequately distilled ethanol. One hand grasped a clipper with the crude depiction of a toothless tattooed whore (emblazoned with the legend "All The Fun o' The Fair In SouthPort!"), the other a half-glass of an exquisitely blended cocktail of gin and gin.
At least, he thought it was gin. The bottle label had had a red metro symbol on it, if his splintering memory served him correctly. That could just as easily be an indicator of lighter fluid.
A flustered corduroy-clone stuttered, standing from his desk. "You can't just...you know, this is incredibly ru-"
He was cut short by an elegant and tactful response by the intruder, a repartee issued from his yellow-grey teeth delivered in the form of a foul extrusion of bilious liquid: three eighths acid, four eighths paint-stripper, one eighth who on earth knew? The toussle-haired Literature student's stutter turned to a scream as the witty reply cut through both his challenge and his corneas.
"Urp." concluded the intruder, with a flourish. What few patches of his fading quarter-coat that had previously been unstained were now utterly ruined.
Pamela narrowed her eyes.
"Well, I suppose that concludes the seminar." She carefully mused. "Questions?"
***
"I've got one." slurred the newcomer, enticingly, as he deftly stole the chair of his fallen compatriot after two failed attempts at sitting on it. His voice was a rough buzz that put one in mind of lithe and predatory jungle cats. Lithe and predatory jungle cats being cut in half by rusty chainsaws.
"I've got one."
She merely arched an eyebrow.
"Tell me, Pamela, have you ever loved and lost?"
"Ladies & Gentlemen, Olivier."
She glanced around and indicated to the capitivated room that this was the identity of the one who had so quickly captured their attention. And the loin-based fantasies of every girl in the room. Even the lesbians.
Especially the lesbians.
"And wasn't it such a coincidence that the villian in Last Dash for Marriage was an Oliver?" He sneered, his cruel lips crackling with hostile dehydration.
"N-"
"That one wasn't really a ques-ugh-tion." Olivier belched, exuding a cloud of potent hormones and even more potent reek. His hands had flowed on automatic pilot, swiftly pushing the Lambert between his lips and lighting it after a few sparky attempts.
"This is though; where's my bloody cigarette?"
The professor's face crumpled confusedly. "Surely, surely you know it is already in your mo-" she was silenced by a glare and a shake of the head from Pamela.
Fishing in a pocket, Oliver extruded a rumpled Superkings packet. And a half empty tin of sardines. From it, he exhumed a wet cigarette with what might be the suspicion of mould growing near the filter. Twin eyes swam through layers of confusion and inebriation.
"Fuuuuuuuuuu...sodding Silk Cut."
The second cigarette slotted into his mouth at the opposite cheek, while a lizardly tongue flicked flecks of sizzlingly sexy spittle across four sets of reading notes.
"Now that you've had your nicotine, maybe you'll be leaving, darling." Pamela hinted, forcefully.
"I'll see you tonight, then, dear." He muttered through a mouth that held all the compulsive attractive power to all people in the room as that of a young Shane McGowan.
"But you don't know where I live..." she puzzled.
A violently forceful laugh rose from his decaying lungs like a rising sun and shivered down the spines of every man and woman present, enflaming their already tingling genitals.
"Don't kid yourself, honey, I've spent the last two days living in your shed."
He stood, and shakily made his way back to the doors, giving a valiant and honourly kick to the fallen student on his way.
"Wait." Pamela's imperious tones made him halt.
***
"Wait. Why do you do this to yourself? Why do you have to hurt yourself so? You were darling and pretty once. Why take all that glamour and make it into something so...so masochistic? Why are you making yourself an idol to gratuity, to pointless excess? Just to look at you brings tears of pity, just to glimpse the promise that once resided behind those fading eyes. Why would you want to make other people lose themselves in admiring you, why would you want to sheepishly indulge in feeling inferior, in feeling less, in feeling cheap and expensively cheated all at the same time? To look at the human body as something so disposable and so noxiously unfulfilled by every moment of tiresome sensation?"Olivier scoffed, or maybe just coughed and cocked his head with a grin that lasted for one quiver of a beat before he swept round and plunged at the doors once more.
But before leaving, Pamela knew, he always needed the last word.
Olivier steadied himself against the doors, cracked nails stained with mud and blood clinging to reality and Propping him upright.
"Before I go, let me just say that being in such close-proximity to such a highly sexed archetype gone hideously righteously wrong has consequences. All the men, you are now impotent. And to all the ladies? You now bear my child. You're all now bear my progeny, a whole cluster of chiraz-swilling, crystal-ket-blend kids both speedy and slow all at the same time. Some of them will be still-born. The LUCKY ones will be still born. Except..."
The Professor goggled madly. "I've had an operation. Fibroids. I have no ovaries..."
"...except you." A crooked finger tipped with yellow lighter burns on the nail then selected her from the throng. "Except you.
You're carrying twins."
And with a cackle that let a dribble of petrol falter past his syphilitic-cigarette lips, he drained his glass and carefully rested the remains in the back of his comatose compadre's skull.
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