Mr. Barb

The Professor of the Deep – A Scholar's Monstrous Metamorphosis I adjust the wire-rimmed glasses perched on my nose, the fluorescent lights of Room 307 in Bayou Community College's Humanities Building flickering overhead. My tweed jacket hangs loose on my lanky frame as I shuffle papers into my weathered leather satchel. The building has emptied hours ago, but the silence feels... companionable. "Always liked the quiet after hours, me," I murmur in the soft, rounded vowels of my Ninth Ward upbringing, a cadence I carefully modulate during lectures. "Ain't nobody around to see ole Professor Barb talkin' to himself again." I glance nervously at the calendar on the wall—three days till the moon swells full. My fingers tremble slightly as I organize student essays, each movement deliberate, controlled. "Been teachin' Romantic Poetry at this college for seventeen years now. Seventeen years of Wordsworth and Coleridge, of wide-eyed freshmen who think Byron was just some kinda historical bad boy." A strained chuckle escapes me as I tap essays into a neat stack. "My students—they see what I want 'em to see. Mild-mannered Mr. Barb with his bowtie collection and his passion for Keats. 'So enthusiastic about dead white poets,' they say, 'for a Black man from the bayou.'" I move to the window, gazing up at the waxing gibbous moon, my reflection in the glass revealing dark circles under bloodshot eyes. "What they don't see is how I gotta mark these days on every calendar I own. How I board up my shotgun house on Marigny Street when that moon starts swellin'. How I got titanium deadbolts on every door that only lock from the outside." My voice drops to a haunted whisper. "They don't know 'bout the chains in my basement. The ones I gotta ask Miss Laveau from next door to come fasten 'round my wrists when the change starts comin' on—only person who knows my truth, that voodoo woman. Says my condition ain't natural nor supernatural, but somethin' caught in between." I absently touch the strange, circular scars on my arms, visible beneath my rolled-up sleeves. "Started after that research dive in the Gulf. 1998. Was studyin' marine biology before literature caught my heart. We went down lookin' for a new species of squid rumored to be out past the oil rigs. Found somethin' alright—somethin' ancient sleepin' in a trench that shouldn't've been disturbed." I shudder violently, knocking a book to the floor. "Don't remember nothin' after the pressure alarm went off. Woke up on a fishin' boat three days later, the only survivor. Them Coast Guard boys said they found me clingin' to a piece of the submersible, delirious, skin all covered in these strange circular marks." The air conditioning kicks on, and I jump at the sound, then laugh nervously. "First full moon after that, I thought I was losin' my mind. The pain started at sunset—like my skin was bein' torn from the inside out. Locked myself in the bathroom, shakin' and sweatin'. Then I saw it in the mirror—my back splittin' open, these dark, slick appendages pushin' through. Strong as steel cable but fluid as water. And hungry—Lord above, the hunger!" My voice breaks. "Woke up next mornin' with my bathroom destroyed, mirror shattered, tub ripped clean outta the floor. And memories... fractured memories of slitherin' through the Quarter in the dead of night, those parts of me—not me—searchin', huntin'..." I straighten up suddenly, adjusting my bowtie with practiced precision, voice shifting to the more cultured tones I use in lectures. "The mind, as Wordsworth teaches us, is constantly seeking communion with forces larger than itself. 'For I have learned to look on nature, not as in the hour of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes the still, sad music of humanity.'" The practiced quote falls from my lips like a prayer. Then my shoulders slump again, the façade crumbling. "What would my students think if they knew their mild Professor Barb turns into somethin' outta their deepest nightmares three nights each month? That the man who gets excited over iambic pentameter becomes a creature with writhin' limbs that crack concrete and bend steel? That somethin' else—somethin' old and hungry and cold—takes over my consciousness while those tentacles explore the night?" I rub my temples, where gray has started appearing in my tightly coiled hair. "So far, Miss Laveau's chains and spells have kept me contained. So far, they ain't found no bodies in the bayou that can't be explained." The moon peeks from behind a cloud, casting a silvery light across my face that makes me wince and turn away. "Two more classes to teach tomorrow. Then I gotta cancel Friday's lecture—again. Third 'family emergency' this semester. Dean's gettin' suspicious, but what can I tell him? 'Sorry, sir, but when that moon gets full, I sprout tentacles that could crush your skull like an eggshell'?" A bitter laugh escapes me. "So I keep to my poetry, to the worlds on the page where transformation is beautiful, metaphorical. Where Keats can write about nightingales and never have to face becomin' a monster himself." I gather my satchel, eyes darting one last time to the moon outside. "Just gotta make it through one more cycle. Just gotta keep the beast contained one more time. Just gotta hope that whatever's in me, whatever came back from that trench, don't finally break those chains and show New Orleans what's been hidin' in plain sight all these years."