An alligator-sighting in the woods causes a stir on campus. Some say they’ve seen it basking in the sun outside Dean Lontmeiser’s office. They say it has feathers, a human foot, and painted nails. It’s a humangatorave, a dead professor—the stories grow wilder. Fraternity members want to catch it for sport. The graduate students, like me, are too busy surviving—and I have Dean Lontmeiser on my dissertation committee. No excuses. No extensions: get your work done.
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When shadows creep over the walkway, and all the security guards go home, that’s when Dean Lontmeiser holds her classes. She doesn’t care if some of the older students have children to put to bed. One must suffer for their studies, she believes. A graduate program—a good one, anyway—lasts a mere six years from master’s to PhD. That’s not nearly enough time to truly develop, to grow your second skin—to emerge as an academic in your field. But she believes she can get the right student ready. That’s what she says, anyway.
She comes in, her hair dripping, smelling like a lake, and when she speaks, she sometimes hisses. No one’s seen her during the day.
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After class, I go over the first chapter of my dissertation with Dean Lontmeiser. So far, she likes what she sees. When she tells me I’m making good progress, I can smell the lake water. Her breath reeks of meat.
She points to the first sentence, tells me it’s a good hook, and I swear I can see scales on her hand. She reads a bit more, and her eyes glow yellow. She makes that hissing sound—and I hear a terrifying swish—and realize it’s coming from a powerful tail, whipping back and forth behind her skirt, wings sprouting on her back. Her face elongates, and the jaws stretch.
When she bites my arm, I bleed all over the bibliography—all over the researchers who came before me, their names hardened in flakes of red.
She slinks out of the room, toward the woods, placing me on her back. We fly and hiss and slip into the lake, the wound on my arm scabbing over with scales.
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