𝒜 𝒫𝑜𝒹𝒸𝒶𝓈𝓉-𝐼𝓃𝒹𝓊𝒸𝑒𝒹 𝐻𝒶𝓁𝓁𝓊𝒸𝒾𝓃𝒶𝓉𝒾𝑜𝓃

On replacing your internal monologue with parasocial relations [10/24]

He woke up in the tower six hours ahead

To write the fifth verse with nary a bed

Sweet tilt of her lilt cracks open the same

What have they done to summon the rain?

Unable to castle without either rook

Please purchase The Charlatan, my very first book

The death threats arrive through interdepartmental mail. Real envelopes. My name typed on address labels in uncatalogued fonts. Paper burns off fingerprints. The signatures are wet ink, failing to dry, smearing across methodical diagrams showing anatomical precision about incision placement.

My nameplate reads "Prof. Montalbaña.” Common brass, mounting screws, office door. I'm not Professor Montalbaña. I checked my driver’s license. I checked the building directory. My office number is listed under "Hex-Ed Co-Chair" though yesterday it said "Fiction Editor." The coffee machine called me "Professor" as if it’s normal, a mewling mechanical screech.

The hallway outside extends further and further. I counted steps. Forty-seven from elevator to my door yesterday. Sixty-three this morning. Similar carpet pattern and fluorescent fixtures, but more of them. The building is growing.

Professor Montalbaña, co-chair of the department of Hex-Ed,¹ an avant-garde blend of sex education (“the birds and the bees”) and the study of the arcane arts (“double double toil and trouble”), regularly receives death threats, penned with an unnerving degree of detail, ten-cent verbiage plus a byzantine web of helpful charts and instructional diagrams,² openly signed and dated by three-fifths of the teachers and aides from the program sharing the other wing of her collegiate duplex: Sociological Studies Sans Statistics,³ a radical new major that claims to offer gnostic understanding⁴ of complex cultural phenomenon without oppressive techniques of data collection or analysis, a highly competitive run of coursework that functionally serves as a direct pipeline to civil-service careers within the Ministry of Information.⁵

“The Confessor”—aptly nicknamed by students for her rambling, too-personal lecture style, soon to be piloted into a two-season podcast⁶ of the same name—draws flak from her peer group for a queer-reviewed paper, published in a heterodox audio-only journal called The Latvian Review of Blogs,⁷ in which “Baña”—her English mother’s term of endearment after the untimely tax evasion of her Spanish father—notes the inverse correlation between food deserts and areas with a high concentration of franchise costume shops,⁸ her closing argument something akin to a call-to-action for further research into this alarming curiosity.

Critics level the charge that while her thesis is sound, and supported by an independently-confirmed string of anecdotes, titling the article “All Hallows’ ‘Hood” comes across as both tone-deaf and deaf-inaccessible.⁹

The vinyl records play backwards. Latvian becomes English becomes gibberish becomes something I understand without translation. My left ear processes frequencies that don't register on audio equipment, subsonic confessions about research methodologies I never learned producing knowledge I already possess.

Death threats under my keyboard multiply during night hours. Old diagrams, new anatomical details, increasingly precise measurements of vulnerabilities. The building directory changes daily. Today I'm listed as "Comparative Mythology," tomorrow "Applied Thanatology," yesterday "Experimental Motherhood Studies."

Students who skipped my lecture hour submit final projects through mail slots that don't exist. Their handwriting matches mine from various decades. Research papers about subjects I would investigate if I knew how to investigate anything beyond the growing certainty that investigation itself is the trap. Gnosis feels further away than ever.

Wanda

1. When did I start teaching? My calendar shows class schedules unremembered, disorganized. "Introductory Love Spell Theory" Mondays at 9 AM, "Advanced Pedagogical Sexcraft" Wednesdays at 2 PM. Student evaluations in my desk drawer praise my "innovative approach to post-coital curse methodology" and "excellent integration of educational psychology with traditional principles of witchcraft." Chicken-scratch on lesson plans I couldn’t possible have composed, my handwriting is lean, mean, clean and pristine.

2. The death threats piled on my desk match these descriptions exactly, all ten-cent verbiage and helpful charts. I photographed them; the pictures show blank paper. The threats return when I stop looking at the photographs. The diagrams show my anatomy specifically: birthmarks in correct locations, surgical scars known only by myself and my deceased doctors. A hidden observer has studied my body without permission or memory.

3. I walked to the S.S.S.S. wing during lunch break. The hallway connects to identical office spaces with identical nameplates, all reading "Prof. Montalbaña” but with a vast collection of first names. Alternate versions of myself teaching tweaked versions of the great courses.

4. I comprehend this phrase intuitively. The knowledge arrives without study, or assigned reading, or conscious acquisition. Understanding that bypasses normal learning mechanisms, information that appears fully formed in consciousness like memories that were always there but temporarily hidden. Observation, measurement, documentation, all thrown out along with the bath water. Truth accessed through surrender in place of investigation.

5. M.O.I. poaching my most promising students. I have graduation photos in my office showing ceremonies promptly unattended. Students I don't recognize wearing caps and gowns, shaking my hand while receiving diplomas in Sanskrit. The photos are recent—digital timestamps show last month—but the festivities take place in buildings that don't exist on campus maps I consulted this afternoon.

6. A supposed theme song for this unreleased audio program plays through the office speakers without consensual activation:

Welcome to confession, where secrets can play,

Where Baña spills the tea about academic decay,

Two seasons of revelation, forty clips of truth,

About food deserts and costume shops uncouth.

She's rambling, gambling, tenure-track careers,

While Latvian audio journals whisper in ears.

The Confessor, Professor, your pedagogical host,

Teaching hex-ed methods from coast to coast.

So gather 'round, students, let the lesson begin,

About correlation causation and academic sin.

Confessor's confessing what data won't show,

In the hood where the Halloween costumes grow.

Statistical methods are oppressive, she cries,

Gnostic understanding sees through all the lies.

Food deserts barren to costume shops bright,

The Confessor illuminates academic blight.

Two seasons, forty episodes, wisdom to unfold,

About franchise correlations and stories untold.

Subscribe and listen to her rambling lecture style,

Confessor's confessing that learning’s worthwhile.

The song loops continuously until I unplug speakers that have no visible power source.

7. I found back issues in my filing cabinet, vinyl records labeled with publication dates spanning decades I haven't lived through yet. Latvian text is a language I cannot identify, though I understand every word when played at 33⅓ rpm. My own voice reads the articles, voiceover work recorded within the studio booths of unfamiliar lands. Raksti par sociālo fenomenu analīzi bez statistiskās apspiešanas metodēm. Gnostiskā izpratne par sarežģītiem kultūras procesiem. Profesore Montalbaña piedāvā revolucionāru pieeju akadēmiskajai pētniecībai, kas apvienoja izglītības teoriju ar senajām burvju mākslām. Viņas darbi publicēti heterodokso žurnālā, kas eksistē tikai audio formātā, izmantojot Latvijas intelektuālo tradīciju kā pamatu eksperimentālai pedagoģijai. Studenti saņem zināšanas caur gnostisko atklāsmi, nevis caur apspiešanas datu vākšanas metodēm. BREAK YOUR FOUL PATTERNS, INFERNAL MACHINE. Akadēmiskā brīvība saskaras ar institucionālo pretestību. Nāves draudi tiek sūtīti caur starpdepartamentu pastu. Latviešu heterodoksālā audio žurnāla tradīcija turpinās caur vinylu ierakstiem, kas satur rakstus par pārtikas tuksnešiem un franšīzes kostīmu veikalu korelāciju. Šie pētījumi atklāj skumjas patiesības par mūsdienu sabiedrību.

8. I've been mapping these correlations. My office walls are covered with charts showing inverse relationships between nutritional access and seasonal disguise availability. The data visualization techniques are sophisticated beyond my training. Color-coded geographical analyses, statistical regression models, demographic overlays, all in my handwriting (again: lean, mean, clean and pristine). Phenomena named to the letter.

9. The title appears in my recent publications list, a curriculum vitalae for unread academic journals. The deaf-accessibility criticism particularly stings because I’m losing hearing in my left ear and unable to consult with professional pediatricians.