The Plot Calls #7 : "Modern Tradition"

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination and/or Ai-assisted-content-generation. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

____

Professor Calvin Murnane had once been a rising star.

In his thirties, he’d rewritten a major text on early Atlantic empires, reframing colonial discourse through new archival material.

By forty, he had tenure and a fellowship.

By fifty, he was a department head.

By sixty, he hadn’t published in over a decade.

His students noticed. His lectures repeated. His references were dusty. He told the same jokes. Used the same phrases. Called every student “champ” when he couldn’t remember their names.

But tenure was a fortress.

“No need to reinvent the wheel,” he’d chuckle. “Truth doesn’t change just because fashion does.”

Behind his back, students called him The Fossil. They mocked his resistance to feedback. His disdain for newer perspectives. They whispered about the petition circulating to get his curriculum reviewed.

But Calvin wasn’t oblivious.

He knew they talked. He saw their eyes glaze. Heard the difference in applause. He blamed the algorithm, then the parents, then society’s obsession with “progress.”

He did not blame himself.

One night, after office hours, Calvin sat alone in the lecture hall—lights dim, echoes sharp.

A pile of blue books sat untouched beside him. He stared at the board, then at his old spectacles lying beside a stack of faded notes.

His chest ached—not physically, but philosophically.

What if they were right?

He reached toward the glasses, then froze.

A soundless whisper curled around him. The air thickened.

He turned—and saw a tall, pale figure in a black robe standing in the doorway. No face, no expression. Just presence.

The figure spoke without movement.

“The soil calls. You never have to change. You never have to grow. The One Beneath promises to keep your sloth of character intact—forever.”

Calvin stood as if entranced. He followed the figure through the quiet halls, out past the east colonnade.

There, where the statues of former deans once stood, was a patch of black-violet soil shimmering beneath the lamplight.

The grass curled away from it. The ground pulsed gently, like a second heartbeat.

In a daze, Calvin removed his spare glasses from his coat pocket.

He knelt, and placed them on the soil.

“I never want to change,” he said. “I have tenure.”

The Idle Man whispered again:

“Feed the One Beneath. Your sloth be thy development.”

The next semester, everything changed—but only for others.

His lectures, though unchanged, were lauded again.

Students praised his “venerable insight.”

Old critics retracted former critiques.

His outdated articles were suddenly referenced in new journals.

The word timeless echoed in every review.

Calvin was thrilled. He’d been right all along.

No need to adapt. No need to evolve.

But then he met Leslie.

A literature professor. Sharp. Curious. Disarmingly kind.

They spoke often after faculty meetings.

She liked his voice. He liked her laugh.

He wanted to impress her—but couldn’t.

When she asked his opinion on a new poetic theory, he quoted Herodotus.

When she mentioned migration metaphors in modern verse, he changed the topic to Napoleon’s campaigns.

When she asked about his parents, his mind blanked.

He realized, with rising dread, that he could no longer form new opinions.

He could only repeat himself.

His thoughts had calcified.

Soon, his lectures looped. His theories recycled.

When asked a fresh question, his mouth moved but his words weren’t his own—just broken fragments of old arguments.

His students still filled the room. They still gave him perfect reviews.

They weren’t learning. They were absorbing.

And he—he was deteriorating.

One evening, a janitor found Calvin seated in an empty hall, whispering the same phrase over and over:

“I fed the One Beneath. I fed the One Beneath. I fed the One Beneath.”

His eyes didn’t blink. His voice didn’t carry.

Later that night, a single gunshot echoed from his office.

Campus police found no body.

Only an overturned chair, shattered glasses.

At the same time, beneath the statues, the soil pulsed once more—and an Idle Man placed a limp body upon the dirt.

No one saw the figure. No one found the remains.

But students say the lecture hall feels heavier now.

And sometimes, during evening classes, they hear someone mutter:

“It’s the same. I’m the same. I can’t grow. I can’t leave.

The Plot Thickens.”

____

Want to follow my horror, fantasy, scifi, and romance content as I publish it?

Subscribe to my "Mark A Figueroa Presents" Official YouTube Channel for videos.

Join my Official Discord Server for notifications by genre.

Join my WhatsApp Group for easy and simple updates for all my content.