Let the games begin
Flames danced in his eyes. It is time for the great ceremony, the Purging of the Faculty.
Tonight, blood will be spilt.
They gather on the football field across from the defunct Rec Pool. It is a full moon. The only light is white rays from above and the bonfires in each end zone.
Here, on this field, is where the administrative faculty will fight to see who will get paid this fiscal year, since only one person will be alive to claim their salary.
Gary May, clad head-to-toe in golden armor, walks slowly to the stands, wearing a cowboy-styled Aggies hat that he won at a football game for having the best social media caption.
The staff face each other while eager alumni sit in the stands, wapping together those inflatable things that make a ton of noise, and tenured professors blow through vuvuzelas. It’s like Fight Club, kinda.
May was asked to help reduce administrative bloat and create ways to free up money for financial aid. Unconventional, but effective. Yet what May concealed from even those closest to him was that he took an odd amount of satisfaction in watching the staff fight to the death. And sometimes, he was able to choose whether a person would live or die. Gary hadn’t felt a rush like that since he was professor and got to hand out failing grades to students.
The Davis Police of course don’t really mind the whole arrangement since, if they don’t have to deal with it, they can just stick to herding turkeys and following around minority folks at Picnic Day.
Yes, thinks Gary. It is time to spill some blood.
Written by: Aaron Levins — adlevins@ucdavis.edu
(This article is humor and/or satire, and its content is purely fictional. The story and the names of “sources” are fictionalized.)
