A Professor's Vengeance Novels & Stories

The professor's wife in the story becomes this quietly tragic figure, almost like a ghost haunting the edges of the narrative. She starts off as this vibrant woman who hosts departmental dinners, the kind who remembers everyone’s dietary restrictions and laughs at dry academic jokes. But as the professor gets deeper into his research—something about obscure medieval texts—she slowly fades. There’s a scene where she’s standing in the hallway, holding a plate of untouched cookies, just staring at his closed study door. Later, you find out she’s taken up gardening, but it’s all night-blooming flowers, like she’s given up on sunlight. The last mention of her is a throwaway line about her moving to a coastal town, and the professor doesn’t even notice she’s gone for three days.

What gets me is how the story never outright says she’s unhappy. It’s all in the details—the way her perfume lingers in rooms he never enters, or how her book club friends stop calling. It’s one of those quiet unravelings that makes you put the book down and stare at the wall for a bit.