The monocled rat sniffed. “We grade all the papers. Someone has to. Your colleague, Professor Pacheco, has been awarding A’s for work that misspells ‘epistemology’ as ‘epistemo-logy.’ With a hyphen. A hyphen , Dr. Mendoza. We are not barbarians.”
Alba smiled. She had never felt less alone. RATOS-A- DE ACADEMIA -
And every night, after the last student left, Alba would sit on the cold floor of Lecture Hall D, sharing a biscuit with a monocled rat, listening to him complain about the Oxford comma. The monocled rat sniffed