HauntedMTL Original – The Professor – Casper Rose
The Professor by Casper Rose
On a mild day in late March, Professor Cavanaugh sat on his padded rolling chair organising the various objects which coated his desk. He scooped up a collection of assorted paperclips and pads of sticky notes and encouraged them into a basket held at an angle at the edge of his desk before tucking it lengthways into the drawer. The Professor always worked better with a clean desk, and there was work to be done today. After he was done, the Professor would need to take the spare data collations back to the lab, and then make it back upstairs for his eleven-thirty class.
As he was walking, the Professor noticed a strange feeling on the roof of his mouth, almost as if he had grazed it on a sharp piece of food; he had no idea. He was still running his tongue along the roof of his mouth as a student stopped him in the hall.
“Professor Cavanaugh?”, she was older for a second year, maybe in her mid-twenties, and if the Professor were to be honest with himself, he had no idea of her name. She continued, “Sorry sir, I was just wondering if we had class next week, seeing as the other group won’t have their lesson on Friday.”
Right, the Professor would need to put a notice up soon, “No, I’ll make sure to let everyone know by this Thursday.” He chewed on the inside of his cheek, feeling the irritation move backwards in his mouth.
“Thank you!” she seemed to have started walking away before she was even finished talking.
Distracted, the Professor kept along his way, still chewing on the inside of his cheek. The feeling had moved again, farther back and behind his back teeth. He could not decide if it itched or not, but now that he had begun paying attention to it, it seemed to bother him even more.
Later, the Professor was back at his desk, reading through a syllabus change for the following year. He had forgotten about the feeling in his mouth while he was teaching but, at that moment, it crept back into the inside of his upper lip. Why? He began digging his tongue into his lip, pushing the feeling around. Had he eaten something?
Minutes went by before the feeling settled once more, but only for the briefest of moments. Irritated, Professor Cavanaugh pushed the syllabus away, taking the back hall to the janitorial bathroom downstairs. He leaned over the sink, avoiding the patches of water littered over the basin, turning his head back and forth with his mouth open. In that moment, he thought of himself like a clown whose mouth waited open for a ping pong ball at a carnival. Despite the amusing thought, Cavanaugh saw nothing in his mouth. He took his thumbs unceremoniously shoved them under his upper lip to expose the pink flesh that was, unfortunately, no more pink than normal.
Sighing, Professor Cavanaugh ran his finger along the inside of his upper lip again, feeling for something, anything. In the most irritated patch of his mouth for that time, the Professor felt several tiny raised bumps, but perhaps his mouth was covered in them, if he really felt it. He checked his watch, four o’clock, almost time for him to go home. He must remember to post that notice.
The Professor stared at himself in the mirror once more, this time at home. He had been home and showered, feeling better having washed off the heat of the day. He still felt hot. The feeling in his mouth had evolved to tingling, and sometimes even – at the most unexpected times – a burning. The bathroom door was open, and the Professor had already confided in her, or perhaps complained, about the feeling. She had half-jokingly told him he had ‘one of those worms’ that get under your skin and crawl around.
“Don’t be silly, Bianca.” Professor Cavanaugh had teased her for her hypochondria, “besides, worms slither, not crawl.”, but the thought played on him. He did not sleep well that night.
The feeling came and went over the next few days, appearing spontaneously to bother the Professor and, with just as much spontaneity, disappeared. Sometimes, it would disappear for hours at a time, and sometimes, it bothered him for as long. Blessedly, the Professor found that if he did his best not to disrupt it, the feeling would settle. Still, it bothered him, and with persistence.
On another of his staring matches with the feeling in his mouth, he scratched at the area in hopes of opening the protrusions and willing them to spill their irritating contents. It stung, and he bled slightly, coating his mouth in a metallic taste, but he was sure he saw a flash of white under the broken skin. This appearance would not be strange, if it had not disappeared a moment later. Professor Cavanaugh felt sick, had he just seen something move inside his mouth? Inside the inside of his mouth?
Weary of the irritation, the Professor pulled open the second drawer with once hand, one hand still pressed into his bottom lip, holding it away from the rest of his mouth. He rummaged for a moment before finding the sharp end of the metal utensil for which he had been looking. Prying his lip away further from his teeth, he dug the tweezers into the wound he had made a few moments before, attempting to grab the thing he had seen. It was gone. Dejected, the Professor set the tweezers on the basin and waited for the thing to return to the front of his mouth.
The next morning, a Saturday, Professor Cavanaugh had his upper lip pinched between his thumb and forefinger and pressed against the side of his nose. Bianca was out that morning, her yoga class. He was pricking and prodding the invisible tingling with the tweezers, breaking the skin and sinking the sharp ends of the tweezers into the wound to pull the thing out. Drool seeped out of the open corner of his mouth and Professor Cavanaugh leaned further over the basin to catch it in the sink.
Eventually, the Professor had worked the entirety of the ends of the tweezers under the skin in his mouth. The pain became searing, and more blood came the deeper he went. Desperate, he kept digging. Finally, his efforts paid off as he squeezed the tweezing ends together underneath his skin and pulled them out, slowly, pulling some of his mouth with them but not wanting to let go of his prize.
When it was out, Professor Cavanaugh stared at the tweezer ends, his hand still clamped firmly on the handle of the small instrument, lest the creature caught in the end managed to squirm free. It was white, tiny, just barely taking up the space at the end of the closed tweezers, and it was moving.
Not seconds later, the Professor felt the tingling return, now damp compared to the stinging in his upper lip. There must be more than one parasite in his mouth. Thoughts crept in of a whole colony of worms living in his body, thousands of them. His skin began to crawl. In the mirror, he could see that the right side of his mouth was swollen, and his teeth were stained red like he would see in the movies.
Professor Cavanaugh was overcome; he had to get rid of this feeling in his mouth. He dumped the tweezer in the sink and ran the water over them to be sure that the thing was gone and pried open his mouth again. The feeling had moved again, and the Professor was forced to make a new incision in his cheek. Using the tweezers once more, he began digging.
Soon, he had found the creature, pale and exposed due to the broken skin inside his cheek. The pain was worse than it had been in his lip, but the Professor was determined to get it out. He had a hold of the worm and was twisting the tweezers inside the wound in an attempt to free it from his mouth, his eyes watering. Suddenly, it came free, sending shockwaves through the entire left side of his face, through his neck. He felt dizzy.
The blackness faded away as Professor Cavanaugh came to. He felt as if a great tiredness had come over him, and a great heaviness too. He lifted his hand to his face – which had already begun to throb – only to find that his arm had stopped about half a foot above the bed. The Professor looked down at the restraints around his wrists. Not yet fully conscious, words floated to him from the other side of a curtain pulled shut.
“Mrs Cavanaugh, I am afraid he will have to be admitted.”
He recognised Bianca’s voice, “I have no idea what happened, all that blood…”
“We’ve stopped the bleeding. He’s on some pretty heavy sedatives.”
Blackness.
Again, the Professor blinked, awake, more awake this time. He could no longer hear his wife. He wanted to scream, what was going on? Adjusting his eyes to the light, he realised the whiteness of the room. Again, words seemed to drift toward him, this time from a farther place. It came to him in pieces.
“His chart says…dose. …was already awake…”
A different voice, “…tweezers. I don’t…said the levator anguli…lost some function of his jaw…”
It all returned to him, the worms. The pain. Drowsily, he listened.
“…tore his tendon right…couldn’t imagine…”
a young Australian author who picked up writing as a hobby and fell in love. Enjoys profound writing that strives for an emotional response from the reader most of all.
What if ours weren’t the only reality? What if the past paths converged, if those moments that led to our current circumstances got tangled together with their alternates and we found ourselves caught up in the threads?
Marla returned home after the funeral and wake. She drew the key in the lock and opened the door slowly, the looming dread of coming back to an empty house finally sinking in. Everyone else had gone home with their loved ones. They had all said, “goodbye,” and moved along.
Her daughter Misty and son-in-law Joel had caught a flight to Springfield so he could be at work the next day for the big meeting. Her brother Darcy was on his way back to Montreal. Emmett and Ruth were at home next door, probably washing dishes from the big meal they had helped to provide afterward, seeing as their kitchen light was on. Marla remembered there being food but couldn’t recall what exactly as she hadn’t felt like eating. Sandwiches probably… she’d have to thank them later.
Marla had felt supported up until she turned the key in the lock after the services, but then the realization sank deep in her throat like acid reflux, hanging heavy on her heart – everyone else had other lives to return to except for her. She sighed and stepped through the threshold onto the outdated beige linoleum tile and the braided rag rug that stretched across it. She closed the door behind herself and sighed again. She wiped her shoes reflexively on the mat before just kicking them off to land in a haphazard heap in the entryway.
The still silence of the house enveloped her, its oppressive emptiness palpable – she could feel it on her skin, taste it on her tongue. It was bitter. She sighed and walked purposefully to the living room, the large rust-orange sofa waiting to greet her. She flopped into its empty embrace, dropping her purse at her side as she did so.
A familiar, husky voice greeted her from deeper within the large, empty house. “Where have you been?”
Marla looked up and glanced around. Her husband Frank was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, drying a bowl. Marla gasped, her hand shooting to her mouth. Her clutched appendage took on a life of its own, slowly relinquishing itself of her gaping jaw and extending a first finger to point at the specter.
“Frank?” she spoke hesitantly.
“Yeah,” the man replied, holding the now-dry bowl nestled in the faded blue-and-white-checkered kitchen towel in both hands. “Who else would you expect?”
“But you’re dead,” Marla spat, the words falling limply from her mouth of their own accord.
The 66-year old man looked around confusedly and turned to face Marla, his silver hair sparkling in the light from the kitchen, illuminated from behind like a halo. “What are you talking about? I’m just here washing up after lunch. You were gone so I made myself some soup. Where have you been?”
“No, I just got home from your funeral,” Marla spoke quietly. “You are dead. After the boating accident… You drowned. I went along to the hospital – they pronounced you dead on arrival.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Frank said. “What boating accident?”
“The sailboat… You were going to take me out,” Marla coughed, her brown eyes glossed over with tears.
“We don’t own a sailboat,” Frank said bluntly. “Sure, I’d thought about it – it seems like a cool retirement hobby – but it’s just too expensive. We’ve talked about this, we can’t afford it.”
Marla glanced out the bay window towards the driveway where the small sailboat sat on its trailer, its orange hull reminiscent of the Florida citrus industry, and also of the life jacket Frank should have been wearing when he’d been pulled under. Marla cringed and turned back toward the kitchen. She sighed and spoke again, “But the boat’s out front. The guys at the marina helped to bring it back… after you… drowned.”
Frank had retreated to the kitchen to put away the bowl. Marla followed. She stood in the doorway and studied the man intently. He was unmistakably her husband, there was no denying it even despite her having just witnessed his waxen lifeless body in the coffin at the wake before the burial, though this Frank was a slight bit more overweight than she remembered.
“Well, that’s not possible. Because I’m still here,” Frank grumbled. He turned to face her, his blue eyes edged with worry. “There now, it was probably just a dream. You knew I wanted a boat and your anxiety just formulated the worst-case scenario…”
“See for yourself,” Marla said, her voice lilting with every syllable.
Frank strode into the living room and stared out the bay window. The driveway was vacant save for some bits of Spanish moss strewn over the concrete from the neighboring live oak tree. He turned towards his wife.
“But there’s no boat,” he sighed. “You must have had a bad dream. Did you fall asleep in the car in the garage again?” Concern was written all over his face, deepening every crease and wrinkle. “Is that where you were? The garage?”
Marla glanced again at the boat, plain as day, and turned to face Frank. Her voice grew stubborn. “It’s right here. How can you miss it?” she said, pointing at the orange behemoth.
“Honey, there’s nothing there,” Frank exclaimed, exasperation creeping into his voice.
Marla huffed and strode to the entryway, gathering her shoes from where they waited in their haphazard heap alongside the braided rag run on the worn linoleum floor. She marched out the door as Frank took vigil in its open frame, still staring at her. She stomped out to the boat and slapped her hand on the fiberglass surface with a resounding smack. The boat was warm to the touch, having baked in the Florida sun. She turned back towards the front door.
“See!” she bellowed.
The door stood open, empty. No one was there, watching. Marla sighed again and walked back inside. The vacant house once again enveloped her in its oppressive emptiness. Frank was nowhere to be found.
So I guess it’s goodbye for now. Feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or here on her website.
Today on Nightmarish Nature we’re gonna revisit The Blob and jiggle our way to terror. Why? ‘Cause we’re just jellies – looking at those gelatinous denizens of the deep, as well as some snot-like land-bound monstrosities, and wishing we could ooze on down for some snoozy booze schmoozing action. Or something.
Honestly, I don’t know what exactly it is that jellyfish and slime molds do but whatever it is they do it well, which is why they’re still around despite being among the more ancient organism templates still in common use.
Jellyfish are on the rise.
Yeah, yeah, some species like moon jellies will hang out in huge blooms near the surface feeding, but that’s not what I meant. Jellyfish populations are up. They’re honing in on the open over-fished ocean and making themselves at home. Again.
And, although this makes the sea turtles happy since jellies are a favorite food staple of theirs, not much else is excited about the development. Except for those fish that like to hide out inside of their bells, assuming they don’t accidentally get eaten hanging out in there. But that’s a risk you gotta take when you’re trying to escape predation by surrounding yourself in a bubble of danger that itself wants to eat you. Be eaten or be eaten. Oh, wait…
So what makes jellies so scary?
Jellyfish pack some mighty venom. Despite obvious differences in mobility, they are related to anemones and corals. But not the Man o’ War which looks similar but is actually a community of microorganisms that function together as a whole, not one creature. Not that it matters when you’re on the wrong end of a nematocyst, really. Because regardless what it’s attached to, that stings.
Box jellies are among the most venomous creatures in the world and can move of their own accord rather than just drifting about like many smaller jellyfish do. And even if they aren’t deadly, the venom from many jellyfish species will cause blisters and lesions that can take a long time to heal. So even if they do resemble free-floating plastic grocery bags, you’d do best to steer clear. Because those are some dangerous curves.
But what does this have to do with slime molds?
Absolutely nothing. I honestly don’t know enough about jellyfish or slime molds to devote the whole of a Nightmarish Nature segment to either, so they had to share. Essentially, this bit is what happened when I decided to toast a bagel before coming up with something to write about and spent a tad too much time in contemplation of my breakfast. I guess we’re lucky I didn’t have any cream cheese or clotted cream…
Oh, and also thinking about gelatinous cubes and oozes in the role-playing game sense – because those sort of seem like a weird hybrid between jellies and slime molds, as does The Blob. Any of those amoeba influenced creatures are horrific by their very nature – they don’t even need to be souped up, just ask anyone who’s had dysentery.
And one of the most interesting thing about slime molds is that they can take the shortest path to food even when confronted with very complex barriers. They are maze masterminds and would give the Minotaur more than a run for his money, especially if he had or was food. They have even proven capable of determining the most efficient paths for water lines or railways in metropolitan regions, which is kind of crazy when you really think about it. Check it out in Scientific American here. So, if we assume that this is essentially the model upon which The Blob was built, then it’s kind of a miracle anything got away. And slime molds are coming under closer scrutiny and study as alternative means of creating computer components are being explored.
Jellies are the Wave of the Future.
We are learning that there may be a myriad of uses for jellyfish from foodstuffs to cosmetic products as we rethink how we interact with them. They are even proving useful in cleaning up plastic pollution. I don’t know how I feel about the foodstuff angle for all that they’ve been a part of various recipes for a long time. From what I’ve seen of the jellyfish cookbook recipes, they just don’t look that appealing. But then again I hate boba with a passion, so I’m probably not the best candidate to consider the possibility.
So it seems that jellies are kind of the wave of the future as we find that they can help solve our problems. That’s pretty impressive for some brainless millions of years old critter condiments. Past – present – perpetuity! Who knows what else we’d have found if evolution hadn’t cleaned out the fridge every so often?
Feel free to check out more Nightmarish Nature here.
Continuing our junkyard dawg werewolf story from the previous St. Patrick’s Days… though technically he’s more of a wolfwere but wolfwhatever. Anyway, here are Part 1 from 2022, Part 2 from 2023 and Part 3 from 2024 if you want to catch up.
Yeah I don’t know how you managed to find me after all this time. We haven’t been the easiest to track down, Monty and I, and we like it that way. Though actually, you’ve managed to find me every St. Patrick’s Day since 2022 despite me being someplace else every single time. It’s a little disconcerting, like I’m starting to wonder if I was microchipped way back in the day in 2021 when I was out lollygagging around and blacked out behind that taco hut…
Anyway as I’d mentioned before, that Scratchers was a winner. And I’d already moved in with Monty come last St. Patrick’s Day. Hell, he’d already begun the process of cashing in the Scratchers, and what a process that was. It made my head spin, like too many squirrels chirping at you from three different trees at once. We did get the money eventually though.
Since I saw you last, we were kicked out of Monty’s crap apartment and had gone to live with his parents while we sorted things out. Thank goodness that was short-lived; his mother is a nosy one for sure, and Monty didn’t want to let on he was sitting on a gold mine as he knew they’d want a cut even though they had it made already. She did make a mean brisket though, and it sure beat living with Sal. Just sayin.
Anyway, we finally got a better beater car and headed west. I was livin’ the dream. We were seeing the country, driving out along old Route 66, for the most part. At least until our car broke down just outside of Roswell near the mountains and we decided to just shack it up there. (Boy, Monty sure can pick ‘em. It’s like he has radar for bad cars. Calling them lemons would be generous. At least it’s not high maintenance women who won’t toss you table scraps or let you up on the sofa.)
We found ourselves the perfect little cabin in the woods. And it turns out we were in the heart of Bigfoot Country, depending on who you ask. I wouldn’t know, I’ve never seen one. But it seems that Monty was all into all of those supernatural things: aliens, Bigfoot, even werewolves. And finding out his instincts on me were legit only added fuel to that fire. So now he sees himself as some sort of paranormal investigator.
Whatever. I keep telling him this werewolf gig isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be, and it doesn’t work like in the movies. I wasn’t bitten, and I generally don’t bite unless provoked. He says technically I’m a wolfwere, to which I just reply “Where?” and smile. Whatever. It’s the little things I guess. I just wish everything didn’t come out as a bark most of the time, though Monty’s gotten pretty good at interpreting… As long as he doesn’t get the government involved, and considering his take on the government himself that would seem to be a long stretch. We both prefer the down low.
So here we are, still livin’ the dream. There aren’t all that many rabbits out here but it’s quiet and the locals don’t seem to notice me all that much. And Monty can run around and make like he’s gonna have some kind of sighting of Bigfoot or aliens or the like. As long as the pantry’s stocked it’s no hair off my back. Sure, there are scads of tourists, but they can be fun to mess around with, especially at that time of the month if I happen to catch them out and about.
Speaking of tourists, I even ran into that misspent youth from way back in 2021 at the convenience store; I spotted him at the Quickie Mart along the highway here. I guess he and his girlfriend were apparently on walkabout (or car-about) perhaps making their way to California or something. He even bought me another cookie. Small world. But we all knew that already…
If you enjoyed this werewolf wolfwere wolfwhatever saga, feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or here on her website.
