Gunther Highhat, head of Boston College Functional Examination of Criminal Element Specialist’s Division, invited this reporter to follow him on one of his “disciplinary hoe-downs,” after discovering that Kyle McFling, LSOE ’19, had been hiding out in a 90 St. Thomas More Rd. study room since the beginning of spring semester.

Highhat, an inhumanly large man with a beard like barbed wire and the haunted gaze of a bloodthirsty bull, walked down rain-spattered STM Rd., his long duster coat flapping in the wind behind him. A piece of saliva and blood-covered bark stuck out of his mouth, the sounds of his furious chewing echoing across campus.

“I read your article about me in The Depths last year,” he growled.

“Did you—” I said.

“THOUGHT IT WAS TRASH,” he howled. “I should have tied you to a lawnmower and rode you around campus like a goat.”

I clutched my notebook, the words “Print Journalism’s not dead” scrawled desperately across the front in blood-red ink. We reached 90 and Gunther stepped back. The “Flower Duet” from the opera Lakme, a piece I know disturbingly well, began to play across the speakers that Highhat had mounted above every building.

“Ah yes,” he said. “This is it. This song really gets my blood flowing.”

“Know what I’m saying,” he said, turning and yelling into my face, a gob of blood flying from his bark-scarred gums and hitting me in the forehead.

“Yes, yes, please, yes I know,” I whimpered, struggling not to void my bowels.

“It’s time to boogie, little man,” Highhat said, before turning and kicking in the unlocked and easily openable front door to 90.

Sprinting madly, I followed Highhat up the stairs and into the study lounge. The room was empty, every student having taken cover at the sound of Gunther Highhat and his legendary disciplinary hoe-downs. He stopped in the middle of the room and looked around, his nostrils flaring out wildly. I stood next to him panting.

“You’re weak,” he said. “A flabby little excuse for a man.”

He removed a dead squirrel from his pocket and tossed it into the air. It landed with a thud, the glassy eyes pointing toward the far wall. Highhat smiled, revealing rows and rows of diseased teeth. My knees shook at this absurd sight.

Highhat crossed the room, reaching a couch on the far wall. With one hand he flipped the couch over, sending it flying to the other side of the room.

“Justice,” he roared.

A poor freshman, wearing only salmon-colored shorts and a stained polo, cowered on the ground, his hiding spot revealed. Bags of empty Funyuns littered the area between the wall and where the couch had just been. A pair of headphones, a laptop, and 73 sheets of paper were scattered around this pathetic wretch. So this was Kyle McFling, the freshman who had tried to escape Newton.

“Please,” he said. “Please don’t make me go back. I can’t take it. The buses take forever and there’s nothing to do and it’s so inconvenient and my roommate smells like farts and Cheetos.”

Tears began to pour down McFling’s cheeks. Highhat crouched down in front of him, his knees cracking with the force of a gunshot. He rubbed one thumb gently across McFling’s cheek, wiping the moisture away. He then lifted the thumb to his mouth and licked it once, savoring it.

“Salty,” he said.

“I can’t go back,” McFling whispered, surprisingly unperturbed by the whole thumb-licking-tears thing.

“Don’t worry, son,” Highhat said. “It’ll all be OK.”

“No.”

“You’ll love the sense of community.”

“You’re a monster.”

Highhat stood up, laughing, and picked up McFling with his right hand, slinging him over his shoulder.

“I think I have all I need to write the story,” I said. “I … I … I … I ….”

Realizing my utter terror was causing me to stutter, I stopped talking and closed my eyes.

“Wait one second,” Highhat said. “You’re not writing the same trash you wrote last year. You’re coming with me. We’ll see how you feel about ol’ Gunther after a few hours in the Squirrel Asylum.”

“Oh dear God,” I whispered.

And so this reporter was taken away, disappearing into Highhat’s cold sub-Gasson labyrinth.

Two weeks later that reporter stumbled across campus in a daze, his eyes wide and terrified.

But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Gunther Highhat.

*This story is part of The Depths, a collection of humorous, fictional portrayals of campus life, written in the spirit of April Fools’ Day. Some names of “sources” have been changed to maintain ambiguity and humor.