“How do we earn it?” I asked.
“You can’t,” Professor Coffin said. “There is certain writing talent that is dispensed from the top. God hands it out. You can’t earn it.”
“Are you mad?” I asked.
“That little test of yours wasn’t even remotely close to my best work,” Professor Coffin shrugged. “But you have to pay handsomely for that. You understand?”
“I don’t understand at all,” I said.
“Those amusement park rides that the Hollywood people like are deliciously expensive,” Professor Coffin explained. “I do this pedagogical thing unpaid for the betterment of letters. You aren’t going to get much out of me as the head of the English Department at The Coffin Island School for Witches. Now are you? Frankly none of us would chair our departments if it weren’t so prestigious. We’re basically blackmailed by the status gratification. Our egos demand it.”
“You only do this for your ego?” I asked.
“Eternity is a big issue too,” Professor Coffin sniffed. “I don’t mind admitting that I want to live forever. I’m greedy like that.”
“How do you figure that you’ll live forever?” Madison demanded.
“Without any successors,” Professor Coffin said. “I’ll just die.”
“Your coffin won’t keep you alive?” I asked.
“Writers need other writers to keep them alive in this world,” Professor Coffin said. “The arts are extremely dangerous. You play with your entire life. That’s why nobody enters the arts anymore. Along with the vicious admission tests that we artists dream up. You’re lucky that you didn’t take a tryout for the visual arts department. The chair of that department makes me shudder. He’s truly a devil. I just play at one.”
“You need us to write like you?” Madison asked.
“Is that what we’re looking at here?” I asked.
“I just need you tie in,” Professor Coffin said. “That’s all.”
“You want us to connect in with that nightmare that you just put us through?” I asked.
Professor Coffin just shrugged. It was like he was shrugging off half of Africa. That’s just the great migration rolling off my back, you know? Pardon me while I exterminate all of East Africa.
“That’s why you’ve done this to us?” I asked. “You’re just trying to save your own hide?”
“We’re out,” Madison said.
Chapter
“Our journey has just begun,” Professor Coffin laughed. “I’m going to teach you to write myself. Or rather I’ll do it through proxy which should be good enough. However you’re my pupils now. We’re magically attached, you see? I birthed you in that test for all purposes so now I own you for better or worse. Don’t disappoint me. Or I’ll just kill you.”
“We’re your pupils in the next world?” I gasped.
“How many others are there?” Madison asked.
“None,” Professor Coffin said.
“Why pick us?” Madison asked.
“I can’t just die and be forgotten,” Professor Coffin shrugged. “So I suppose vanity is a considerable factor too. I’m enormously vain, you understand? I like a mirror with myself in it. I don’t mind admitting that to my potential successors. I actually like to flaunt it a bit. That old narcissism is fun. You will have to embrace that reflection in the mirror too if you’re going to someday topple me as ruler. Ousting me from my chair is going to be quite the task. I enjoy that cushion under my bottom. That’s how it is at the top. The belfry is very cushy, indeed.”
“Who are you?” I demanded.
“I am the Head of The English Department of The Coffin Island School for Witches,” Professor Coffin said. “I am regretting not making your test harder. You seem a bit slow on the uptake. Perhaps I didn’t test you enough.”
“It was plenty tough,” I said. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”
“Great artists never apologize,” Professor Coffin said. “That’s rule number one. If you’re looking for comfort buy a highchair. I’m playing on that chair metaphor a bit. I’ll expect nothing less out of you too. I like my metaphors as you can imagine. I want them forcefully played out to the point of breaking. You will bend that language for me or I will just kill you. The same goes for the writing. If you fail to kill it on the page then I will kill you. I am an ill villain from the old school, get it, young people?”
“Why did you strand me on the other Coffin Island for so long?” Madison demanded. “Four hundred years is pretty severe.”
“I was less famous before Booster came along,” Professor Coffin shrugged. “It was necessary to ward off all the prospective students no matter the talent level. I was jealous and shallow too. So it was necessary to treat the brightest lights hideously. Snuff you right out.”
“You were jealous of me?” Madison asked.
“There was that,” Professor Coffin said. “But there was also the practical matter, you see? I needed time to write. I had no time for fantastically gifted students. What a bother. The tedious ones are bad enough. The true geniuses are a nightmare. You’ve got to squash them immediately.”
“That’s what you did to me?” Madison asked.
“Couldn’t you sense the conspiracy?” Professor Coffin asked. “All those greedy eyes on your back were real.”
“I always thought everything was out to get me on Coffin Island,” Madison said. “I just thought I was crazy.”
“Always go with your first thought,” Professor Coffin said. “Especially if it’s crazy then you can work it into something manageable. You form that insanity and make it work for you. That’s how you do the writing with the spider legs on Mars.”
“That’s how you know you’re a real genius?” Madison asked. “Or you’re just stark raving mad. I’d like to shoot you in the face. How’s that for honesty.”
“It’s enormously difficult to master my type of savagery on the page. It’s a freak show, my talent, you know?” Professor Coffin said.
“You needed the time to write,” Madison snarled. “You couldn’t master your freak show talent? So you punished me?”
“To be perfectly honest with you, Madison,” Professor Coffin said and pointed back and forth with his cigarette holder with the pink whale on it. “We had a bit of an artistic conflict.”
“We had an artistic conflict!” Madison shouted.
“I’ve got to hear this,” I said. “I’m glad that I survived long enough to get to this point in the narrative.”
“It’s quite interesting actually,” Professor Coffin said.
“I’m dying to hear your explanation,” Madison said. “Tell me while I sharpen my spear. How would you like it in your ear? We’re going to have some serious problems, you hear? You’re not going to teach me. I can promise you that. I’m going to school you before this whole journey is through. Put the screws right into you, Professor Coffin. You can bet your whole life on that. It’s a death threat that I will deliver upon.”
“Funny you should mention that,” Professor Coffin nodded. “Death and dying is our artistic conflict.”
“How do you figure that?” Madison asked.
“We’re both preoccupied with it artistically,” Professor Coffin said. “We enjoy gazing at the valley below. Peering at death is what stimulates us.”
“That’s why I murdered everyone?” Madison gasped.
“You wanted to watch them die,” Professor Coffin confirmed.
“Then see what happened next,” Madison said.
“You are preoccupied with the postmortem,” Professor Coffin said.
“How ghoulish,” Madison said. “But it’s true.”
“We’re pathologists on the page,” Professor Coffin confirmed. “Your work is just a little darker. I have paved the path for you though. You will make a wonderful successor to me. There is a direct line between us.”
“It’s called death,” Madison laughed. “I’m going to really savor killing you.”
“On the contrary,”
Professor Coffin said. “Your writing will someday keep me alive.”
“I should just kill you right now,” Madison said.
“Do it,” I suggested.
“I am the endowed Chair in the English Department,” Professor Coffin hissed. “I can strike you down with a single word.”
Professor Coffin was The Head of The English Department? He could strike us down with a single word? Something terribly true about this statement rang through. Professor Coffin was physically forceful with his words.
Madison and I both shuddered. There was something awfully dark about him when he turned it on. His effect was brutal. The lights just flickered in your head like they were about to go out. Professor Coffin was manning the light switch. He could just flick that switch whenever he wanted to. He did it to be a rude jerk too. He was just showing off with your whole life. That’s all he was flicking. It’s just your whole life. It’s no big deal, really, whatever. Flick.
Professor Coffin could definitely do it. Extinguish your entire existence with a word. Blow you out just like that Russian theorist that I had hallucinated. Puff, he just did it. That candle that just went out was you. Or rather it used to be you. You’re snuffed. The after burns are all that are left of you. Those little wisps of smoke that refuse to let go? That’s all you’ve got. But sit tight because there is more.
Professor Coffin just licked his finger to flip the last page on your life. He’s going to touch that smoldering ember with his wet finger. Those hazy, lazy bits of smoke that are leftover from your life are deeply annoying to him. Those brutal remembrances of things past that were once you are about to no longer exist. It’s just easier to extinguish those unpleasant thoughts with a wet snap.
Why roll around with those dark thoughts if you don’t like them? You let artists do that. That’s what they get paid for. They form all that unpleasantness into something beautiful. Or they just cut off their ears. Or slit their wrists. Get a little rope for the dope. Throw it over a beam in the garage. Then the wife comes home with the automatic clicker. What a shock.
Either way you better watch yourself around Professor Coffin unless you want your lights shut out. He’s got his finger on the switch. Which way is he going to turn your dimmer? It’s troubling being around a mind like that.
“I’ve won every award for writing in the magical world,” Professor Coffin declared. “I can read your thoughts too. You must really be quite the sensation in that small town that you crawled out of. Thinking in that quaint accent of yours is quite charming. I was helping you back there in Flemish hell because I wanted you to make it. I’m actually rooting for you, right now, in my own disturbed way.”
“Those thoughts that I was having back there in Flemish hell were yours?” I gasped.
“They certainly weren’t yours,” Professor Coffin said. “I had to see if your mind could handle the really big thoughts. All really big writers are really big thinkers. You can’t write big if you can’t think big. You’re mind is adequate for the job. We’ll have to expand it a bit though. It will be quite painful, of course. The road to greatness is littered with broken glass. There is also the odd Molotov cocktail that hits you in the chest too. Where would Russian letters be without that? I have just the right Russian Barber lined up for you from the former Soviet bloc.”
Why bother teaching me if I can’t handle the lesson? I thought. You’re really quite the teacher. Just teach the good students is that your policy? That highway of broken glass sounds lovely. I’d love to chain you to my bumper and drag you down it. That would be horror show.
“Careful with those thoughts,” Professor Coffin cautioned. “Extinguish your cigars for takeoff. I don’t permit anyone to smoke on this flight except the pilot, myself. I just don’t care for the smell of other people’s smoke in interstellar space. I know it’s ungenerous of me but that’s how it is at the top. I control all the smoke in outer space because I’m the only real cosmonaut.”
Chapter
Madison and I dropped our cigars out the window. We would have dropped our hands out the windows of the glass Cadillac to placate Professor Coffin if we could have. When he wanted to crank up the fear, he just did it. He didn’t just casually strike fear in your heart with the humblest of words. He stabbed you right in the chest. And he did it with the commonplace. You just need to put out your cigars because I control all the smoke in outer space? I’m the only real cosmonaut? Say what? Come again? Is this guy for real?
It was also how he was saying it like he was some sort of cruel joke. You understand? We’re all on the same level here. I’m just a glorious joke, that’s all. I am Professor Coffin. I am the Head of The English Department at The Coffin Island School for Witches. Who are you again?
“We’re about to bunny rabbit so you’ve got to fasten your caterpillar too,” Professor Coffin winked. “Don’t want the mouse to hit you in the face.”
Professor Coffin was messing with our minds. There was no question about it. He was playing some sort of high level trickery and jokes. It was up on such a weird level. Yet it made perfect sense.
“Shall we push off now?” Professor Coffin grinned and then he evaporated. He sort of melted in his glass seat.
Then he reappeared. Let’s do that one more time he seemed to be saying in our minds. Then Professor Coffin disappeared again. He melted right down to nothing. Then he reappeared like sand falling through the hourglass. I was beginning to understand that metaphor. Or rather it was just becoming vaster and more complicated like the Sahara desert. How to cross that wasteland? You need a proper vehicle like a camel, I suppose. Can I get a camel driver up in here pronto? Mind if I smoke? I’m bit nervous about this whole situation. Of course it’s Turkish tobacco in a hookah. Don’t be foolish, man. I’m bunny rabbit.
Professor Coffin was like that. He had energy. You know? It was like a freak show too as advertised. Let’s just glimpse at it a bit. That circus is bunny rabbit. Never mind the freak show. We can surely tame that. It’s the lion that I was worried about. The mind that was operating the roar was appallingly dangerous. You want to stick your head into that cavern? Be my guest. Carnival freaks aren’t born. They’re made. I’m going to step off gingerly to the side right now and let that circus caravan with the pachyderm pulling the cart just thunder by. Reel that thumb back in before the elephant sucks it off like a peanut. It’s what’s attached to that thumb that’s caught the elephant’s attention. What’s that thing that’s operating your arm called? Your brain, I guess. The elephant is going to sit on that. Just take a load off. Shove something delicious down its trunk too, you.
You start thinking like Professor Coffin and what’s going to happen to you next? You’re headed for greatness or total calamity that’s for sure. Sometimes those states are just mixed. You’re back looking at the big house, the bughouse or the penthouse by my estimation, pal. Wait a second here. Who am I talking to? Or is somebody talking through me. I get it. Professor Coffin is just messing with me. I like it though. I like it a lot. You just bring it on, Professor Coffin. That’s what you do.
However another part of my brain was sounding the alarm. The thought process behind these thoughts is alarming. You’re telling me that thoughts aren’t threatening. Thoughts can’t hurt you. You fool. You tell that to Professor Coffin. His thoughts are wildly unsettling. They’re very threatening. They’re not nice too. They’re stalking the daylights out of me. I’m calling the cops.
911, what is your emergency? This guy is harassing me with his thoughts. Where are these thoughts located exactly, crazy?
You fool. They’ve attached themselves to me like a black widow. And they won’t get off! It sounds like you have a monkey on your back. Would you like me to call an ambulance? I don’t have a monkey on my back. You fool. It’s just Professor Coffin. He’ll jig all he wants. Even after the band stops. That’s when he gets really good. When the lights go out, the band goes home and you’re all alone. That’s when he cranks up the act.
Pro
fessor Coffin was a professor that you desperately wanted to please. The alternative was just too horrible. He was stomping all over your thoughts. The terror that he struck into my heart with his mere words was absurd. I was beginning to see the broad outlines of the middle section of the test. That Old Havana in glass was just a ruse. It was the theater of the absurd as The Rollercoaster of The Absurd suggested.
What sort of school makes you go physically through the theater of the absurd to admit you? Do you really want to go to a place that is that cruel for openers? What does graduation include? Human sacrifice and kicking heads down the temple stairs?
We’re going to send you to a really nice school. First, you’re going to have to take a horrific test. It’s a play, a costume drama, but you’re not going to be permitted to know the secret until after you’ve passed it. We’ll cast you in the theater of the absurd unbeknownst to you as well as, what the hell, against your will. How would like to be cast in that? We’re going to refuse to ask you though. Why ruin the surprise? We want that heart attack that we’re trying to give you to stop your heart. It’s not called cardiac arrest if you heart doesn’t stop. We have to do this the right way otherwise our fraud isn’t real. We must make it completely real for you.
You’re going to do the theater of the absurd in real time with a fictional version of your future instructor. The writer that wrote your nightmare is going to be there to coach you through it. Actually he’s too famous to be there himself but he’ll script up a doppelganger. How does that sound now that’s over? We got one over on you, you fool.
What sort of devil would write that just as the entrance exam? He should be shot at sunrise after being forced to purchase the bullet at the commissary out of his widow’s annuity fund. His children should pack the bullet too. His first born should pour the gunpowder into the cup and then put in the primer. His mistress should pull the trigger. Then everyone should be fed his corpse through funnels. Then we cut out all their livers. I was in the market for serious revenge.
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