THE TRIAL

An adaptation of Kafka, brought forward to expose Canadian academic bureaucratic evil. Meet a pair of demons confers, Uncle Malfax and his dear demon nephew and new apprendice Smoldergut

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By the time you read this, I suspect I will be sacked. (Yep, July 7) I’m not sure if it’s because I said I stood with Israel, or because I called Hamas Nazi, or that I hurt someone high up’s feeling with historical truth. Maybe it’s the way I dress. Gotta be something.

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Training Manual: A Masterclass in the Art of Institutional Erasure

Division: Office of Subtle Malice and Bureaucratic Despair. U of Guelph Office.

Seminar: Nine Phases to Obliterate a Defender of the Despised (A Handbook of Polite Perdition)

By: Senior Undersecretary Malfax, with annotations by Apprentice Smoldergut

Narrator’s Foreword: Consider this a dispatch from the beige bowels of institutional hell, where the soul is smothered not by fire but by forms, where evil wears a lanyard and sips decaf. If Kafka and Hannah Arendt had a lovechild, it would be this: a seminar on how to ruin a man without spilling a drop of blood, all while chirping about “wellness.”

Our target? A professor who dared call Hamas Nazis and stand with Israel. Our method? A Kafkaesque trial, minus the goose-stepping, but with a generous side of schadenfreude. Buckle up, dear reader—this is bureaucracy as black comedy, and the punchline is despair. —P.F.

Scene Setting: The Seminar of Shadows

The room is beige. Not the existential beige of a hospital corridor, nor the cosy beige of a suburban sofa, but the default beige of a bureaucracy that forgot to care. The walls hum with the sterile buzz of fluorescent lights, stained where posters once preached “Together We Thrive.” Now, only their ghostly outlines remain, like gravestones for hope.

No desks. No chairs. Just a wobbly plastic table buckling under a broken speakerphone and three binders: “CONFIDENTIAL,” “DO NOT READ,” and “TRAINING MATERIALS.” A flip chart looms, veiled in grey, promising revelations.

Malfax, Senior Undersecretary of the Academic Office of Subtle Malice and Bureaucratic Despair, stands at the front, clad in business casual. His powder-blue shirt is wrinkled just enough to feign humanity, the knot on his tie is too tight for a man with his sleeves rolled up. He stands, one hand on a tepid decaf, the other fondling a laser pointer he’ll never use. A monitor, with its red light indicating it is powered up, faces forward.

Smoldergut, his nephew, perches on an ergonomic stool. Clutching a clipboard, he scribbles with the zeal of a demon auditing souls for an infernal MBA. No brimstone here, no claws—just toner’s faint whiff and the rustle of sealed envelopes. This is bureaucratic academic hell: banal, meticulous, terminally polite. The room is airless, just one window, the shade almost pulled down, timeless. Tuesday or Armageddon? Who cares.

Malfax clears his throat.

“Smoldergut, my smouldering cinder, welcome to the art of erasure,” he purrs, adjusting his collar with a smirk. “We call it ‘employee lifecycle optimisation’ now—HR loves a euphemism.”

He giggles, a sound like paper shredding. “No fiery pits, nephew. Zoom calls, and auto-replies, and you, if you listen to the bugs, you might hear them chanting Cousin Jeremy’s ¹mantra: Peace, peace, when there is no peace.”

Malfax continues, “Our target: a professor, a fool who speaks truths about Israel, calling Hamas what it is—Nazis reborn. A defender of the despised, Smoldergut, and thus a problem. His colleague, Zebadiah, a venomous wretch whose hard drive brims with Jew-hate—cursing Israel, calling Jews “filth”—is our sacred cow, untouchable by bureaucratic fiat. Our mission: banish the truth-teller, make him a pariah, while the university’s drones pin “Shalom” badges to their Zoom backgrounds and chirp about “mental health.”

This is no vendetta. It’s a masterclass in bureaucratic evil—thoughtless, bloodless, the kind that ruins lives while muttering peace, peace, when there is no peace.

Malfax unveils a flip chart:

Nine Phases to Poison a Workplace and Erase a Defender Without Fuss.

PHASE ONE: Arrest by Ambiguity

We begin, Smoldergut, with an arrest—not with handcuffs, but with a memo. Suspend the professor mid-semester, during finals’ chaos, when students are zombies and faculty phantoms. No charges, no explanation—just a letter: “You are suspended until further notice. ‘Do not contact anyone from the university, past, present, or future.’ Signed? Not a name, but a title: Director, DEI and Wellness Dreams.

Irony is our aperitif.

Yes, ban him from campus. Threaten to arrest him if he comes near his office. This is facelessness, nephew—no one owns the order, yet it’s done. Accountability? A myth. A department can’t be sued, can’t be shamed.

Smoldergut broods: “Why gag him? No charges, no accusers.”

Malfax snapped his fingers. “The point? There is none. Gagging severs bonds between students, colleagues, and janitors. Separation is the broth before the stew. Soon, they whisper: He’s gone? Suspicious. Humans crave closure, Smoldergut. A void begs a lie.”

Malfax points at the monitor, which now comes alive.

“Cue Vice President Bland, our Kafkaesque clerk in a blazer, her mail-order PhD framed beside intern-cribbed speeches.”

Bland murmurs, “He’s finished,” and smiles.

“What is finished?” Smouldergut says.

Malfax nods, “Exactly, you see, Smouldergut, confusion festers, and pretension fogs, and humans, scrolling their phones, love the fog—it lets them avoid guilt. They chant peace, peace, when there is no peace, mistaking words and labels for truth.

Malfax pushes a button on the remote to change the view.

The professor sees bugs, cockroaches, a little taller than the humans, but better dressed. They are Kafkaesque horrors oozing and sliding down hallways, but no one looks up. He shakes in revulsion.

“Moral blindness, nephew, Malfax quips. “They’re too busy swiping. They never see our friends, pointing to the roaming bugs, all wearing khaki pants and Tommy Hilfiger golf shirts.

Smoldergut’s note: No charges? Too blatant?

Malfax’s reply: Blatant? Of course, subtle gossip trumps facts. A blank page invites darker and darker lies.

PHASE TWO: The First Whisper of Defamation

“Next, Smoldergut, we summon the court of whispers—quieter than a priest’s alibi and twice as oily - Zebadiah, our hate-fueled zealot, spreads rumours: our decent professor is ‘violent,’ and... “

He pauses. “This is grotesque, granted, he calls the professor a safety threat to children,” which is, of course, a sly wink at calling him a paedophile, a criminal. Remember the trick, imply in a whisper, so it is so forever clear, but it wasn’t said, never “pedophile”—too gauche.”

“Innuendo is our venom,” he pauses, enjoying the sound of his insight. “Zebadiah’s fifteen daily posts—Jews as ‘filth,’ Israel’s ruin, his blood and holocaust libels, his death fantasies—are our script. No one checks his record; it’s tedious. Bland shields him, another court official hiding a file. Lies fester and ooze and spread.”

“If the professor protests, threaten ‘process.’ Why is he upset? He must be guilty. Gossip mutates; and a fortnight by dusk, he’s a monster—claim ‘thousands of complaints’ - all manufactured,” he snickers.

“In 2025, fact-checking is a chore. This is defamation by murmur, responsibility vanishing like a memo in the archives. PhDs nod, mistaking degrees for virtue, joining the hate while still muttering peace, peace, when there is no peace. They confuse assertion with truth and think using the word ‘fairness’ sanctifies lies. And they are always blind to the bugs’ hissing truths; only the professor sees.

Smoldergut’s note: “What if the lies unravel?”

Malfax’s reply: Unravel? They’re too busy scrolling. Whisper on, and they’ll buy it. But hate is the enemy of reason, someone consumed with hate is more foolish than a child. Remember your schooling, you must remember years ago when our beloved Goebbels dropped by to talk about how if you repeat a lie enough, it will always be believed. Have faith young demon.