The Dead and the Dying Read Online Free Page B

his view on feminism, and the last thing I need right now is to hear him launch into another of his grand speeches.
    "This isn't feminism," I reply. "This is something way more vitriolic. If she believes this stuff, it's as if she genuinely thinks that there needs to be armed conflict between the sexes. She actually made the point, toward the end of the essay, that the gender war could be a global conflagration. It was almost as if she wants to see men and women tearing chunks out of each other in the street. It wasn't rhetorical discourse, either. There were times when the passages seemed to run out of control, as if she couldn't help myself." I pause for a moment. "To be honest, I feel weird whenever I'm in the same room as her."
    "Relax," he replies. "You know what some of these students are like. Full of firebrand rhetoric, but the second they have to actually do anything in the real world, they just turn to jelly. This girl of yours probably gets off on writing all sorts of crap, but it's all just stuff from her head. Sure, she might be nuts, but I guarantee it'll never get further than some flowery prose and a few vindictive ideas." He pauses. "Actually, I think I might know which student you're talking about. Kinda short, plain, not unattractive in her own way but definitely not the kind of girl you'd notice across a crowded bar, if you know what I mean. Her name's -"
    "I don't think we should get into personal details here," I reply hastily.
    "Paula Clarke," he says, grinning at my discomfort. "That's who you're on about, right? Come on, admit it." He waits for me to reply. "She stands out like a sore fucking thumb," he continues. "She doesn't seem to have any friends, and she slinks about as if she's trying not to get noticed. Sometimes I spot her on the campus, and I swear to God, there's something so fucking weird about her. You know in comics when someone stinks, and they have wavy stink lives coming off them? Her weirdness is almost like that, almost weird. Fuck, I get a slight chill whenever I see her."
    "I'm not saying that she's dangerous," I continue, still uncomfortable with the idea of using her name in the conversation. "I just think she's got some unusual ideas, and I can't shake the feeling that she's looking at me, at all men, as if we're monsters. Animals. If even half of what she wrote in that essay was true, she seems to think that men are these absolute bastards who go around expressly trying to ruin the lives of every woman they meet."
    "Aren't we?" Harry replies with a smile. "You know what I mean. It's just in her head. She's probably led a very insular life, raised by a crazy mother or something. The girl's probably a lesbian, and she'll grow up and live alone with a bunch of cats, and even though she'll be fucking miserable, she'll think she's the only person in the world who saw through the illusion and understood the truth. It comes down to ego in the end. She thinks she's right and everyone else is wrong. Just ignore her as much as possible and wait two years until she fucks off back to the real world. There's no point fighting against her. She believes what she believes, and it's got nothing to do with logic."
    "It's just that she writes so convincingly about violence," I point out. "She goes into detail, almost as if she genuinely thinks about this kind of thing. It's as if what she wrote in that essay was just the tip of the iceberg. I guess it scares me a little to think about the kind of mind that would come up with something like that."
    "Then report it," he says. "If you think she's planning something, or that she could plan something, file a report."
    "No," I say firmly. "This is nothing more than a clash of personalities. She's probably a perfectly nice girl underneath it all. She just comes across as being a little..." My voice trails off as I try to find the right word. Even though there's something about Paula Clarke that unsettles me, I can't shake the feeling that I'm being