Leatherface of Baylor*

A Story by Abishai100

Shiva becomes a Baylor professor and meets a Leatherface-copycat who compels him to re-think the natural shape of civilization dolls!

Here's a metaphysical/mythological opus about Leatherface (fictional cannibal psycho from Texas Chainsaw Massacre horror-films) and Shiva (Hindu deity of meditation/destruction) about the deep contouring of psychology and aethetics in our design-drenched civiliation. This final piece was inspired by the deformity-analysis film Dogma. Thanks for reading!

====

I am Shiva, master of destruction. I sit on my mountaintop in the Himalayas and meditate on the quality of chaos and the need for mighty waters. I decided to transform myself into the Baylor University professor Isaac Satan, teaching an insightful modern course on the links between psychology and literature and literature and horror-cinema. I talk mostly about Leatherface, the iconic fictional chainsaw-wielding cannibal from the cult-favorite Texas Chainsaw Massacre horror-film franchise. I'm considered an intelligent professor at Baylor!

I have connections to the CIA/P-IRA (Provisional Irish Republican Army) in Belfast (Northern Ireland), where I do intelligence translation work conducive to modern negotiations with Sinn Fein for improved inter-religious relations between the British Protestant majority and Irish Catholic minority. One of my thesis students at Baylor, Hannah Greene, is writing about horror-cinema connections to radical literature and anarchy art and Georgia O'Keefe art. She's quite bright and thinks she's found an intriguing connection between social folklore and living democracy. Hannah's also a stand-out field-hockey star at Baylor!

The campus at Baylor (Texas) is really outstanding. We have immaculate facilities and great educational resources and powerful modern media, which was vital for educational networking during the Coronavirus quarantine tribulation of 2020. I used the Internet to transmit video-clips of Hitchcock films and Tobe Hooper films to my students who were studying online at Baylor during the quarantine. Baylor students love the giant U.S. state of Texas and its colorful homage to the idea of socialized media.

I also market my collected IRA dolls to my Baylor students, showing them how political life and sociocultural intrigue and complexity even in Europe catalyzes creative forms of art and expression. These dolls are not unlike the Annabelle dolls you find today in America, inspired by the new horror-films. In other words, I teach my students about the living links between creativity and drama!

My fellow Baylor professor, Barbara Cornfield, is a very educated teacher in psychology and teaches a very informative course at Baylor (Texas) about the development of literature in conjunction with psychiatry in civilization. She likes my use of horror-cinema and comics and dolls collected from my world experiences for my educational courses on the living drama of sociocultural folklore and its impact on social aesthetics and even politics. Barbara and I have a very strong relationship and bond at Baylor (Texas). She's also an extraordinary mathematician.

I told my students one day during a Halloween season course-lecture, when I walked into class dressed up as the DC Comics superhero Green Arrow (the iconic American vigilante and super-archer), that to destroy the myth of socialized frailty in civilization, we have to address the reality of constructed fantasies in society. Why for example are unusual avatars such as Arrow and Leatherface used to celebrate ideas about living fear and living dogma?

I'm part of the celebrated Oxford Group, as is my Baylor friend/peer Barbara Cornfield. The Oxford Group is an age-old literary education society devoted to the celebration of the social matrix as it pertains to everyday psychology. It's included excellent writers such as C.S. Lewis. The Oxford Group is therefore respected and known at Baylor.

I showed my Leatherface comics to my Baylor class one day during a lecture in which Barbara was a guest-speaker/instructor. One of my students, Thomas Hewitt, kept asking me why such graphic imagery is so reflective of American fantasy. I found it rather odd, as did Barbara, that this eccentric Baylor student was so curious about the general shape of invented insanity!

I decided to invite Hewitt to my office for a personal talk during my private office-hours at Baylor. I presented him with a gifted rubber sophisticated slingshot toy and told him he could use it to aim and shoot at trees on the Baylor campus. When Hewitt grinned and accepted the slingshot-gift, he felt the need to ask me why I thought such a toy would teach him something about living psychology. I explained it was akin to the buzzing chainsaw of Leatherface. I thought Hewitt thought I was trying to teach him that toys (like tools!) represent a human consciousness.

Two weeks later, there was the horrifying campus news at Baylor that a psycho-copycat modeling himself after the real fictional movie-avatar Leatherface (Texas Chainsaw Massacre) actually dressed up like the fictional ghoul and murdered 3 Baylor area policemen! I was horrified and wondered if Hewitt had any role in this very bizarre crime, since he was so intent on asking me why I was so intrigued by horror-art and its relation to psychology/psychiatry. I got a strange email from Hewitt one week later in which he wrote, "Professor Satan, I am indeed the actual Leatherface!"

I contacted the police and gave the email to the FBI who recommended I contact the US consulate in Northern Ireland to make sure this psychotic Baylor student Thomas Hewitt was not stalking and tracking me and my lifelong activities and to see if they could find footprints to his behavior and detective-work! The consulate informed me that Hewitt did indeed call them when he discovered that his Baylor professor was linked to the consulate in Belfast. I now knew Hewitt was Leatherface.

I decided to contact a local Texas sheriff and his bounty-hunter wife whom Barbara introduced me to earlier and requested they take private fees to serve as my personal bodyguards during this Leatherface ordeal on the Baylor campus. The sheriff and his bounty-hunter wife happily took up the challenge and suggested they had experience tracking young men who were copycat psychos. I was relieved!

The sheriff gave me a Berry & Co. saber to keep at my house in case anyone broke in claiming to be Leatherface! I wondered if Hewitt would do the break-in and require me to defend myself aggressively with this sharp and shiny silver saber. I kept the saber in my living room, above my fireplace, at my house on the Baylor campus. I hoped and prayed I'd never have to use it. The sheriff told me he'd drive by my house every now and then to check if I was safe and secure.

Two weeks later, more news of murders on the Baylor campus surfaced, this time a crime involving a sorority student named Heather Donahue who had some relatives connected to the Easter Rising of 1916. I knew Hewitt was behind the crime and decided to transform myself back into Shiva to confront him seriously as an 'officer' of social justice!

SHIVA/ISAAC: I want you to end this nonsense, Hewitt!

HEWITT/LEATHERFACE: Call me...Leatherface, professor Satan.

SHIVA: I am the master of destruction, Lord Shiva.
LEATHERFACE: Are you joking, dude?
SHIVA: Why would I lie about that to you, Leatherface?
LEATHERFACE: You're scared of me, Shiva.
SHIVA: Perhaps!
LEATHERFACE: Well, I'm not scared of anything.
SHIVA: Why's that?
LEATHERFACE: I have this chainsaw and a devilish mask and costume!
SHIVA: You're a sociopath, Leatherface.
LEATHERFACE: So, you're a vigilante, then?
SHIVA: I'm a crusader.
LEATHERFACE: What's your crusade?
SHIVA: The deification of art in the face of calamity!
LEATHERFACE: Images of my persona are in horror-comics.
SHIVA: I know; I hoped you'd read those comics and find inspiration!
LEATHERFACE: I have perhaps.
SHIVA: No; you found darkness.
LEATHERFACE: Woo!!!
SHIVA: Listen to me; I have a gold Lotus and private-jet.
LEATHERFACE: So?
SHIVA: I want you to daydream about normal ambitions.
LEATHERFACE: Luxury?
SHIVA: Popcorn...magazines...television...chowder...sports!
LEATHERFACE Why?
SHIVA: You don't want people think you're antisocial, do you?
LEATHERFACE: No, I don't professor/Shiva.

SHIVA: Good; I'll check on you in a month and hope you're working on a better dream.

LEATHERFACE: Woo!!!

I had to become Shiva again to deal with this maniac. I felt like Batman or Green Arrow himself! However, I was relieved thinking I was successful in reaching the brain-waves of this modern psychopath. I told the FBI, the Texas sheriff, and Barbara. They were all relieved. In the following month, Hewitt disappeared and was never heard from again. I suspected he retreated into the forest to meditate on the depth and mystery of diaries. I'd managed to reach Leatherface!

Barbara and I started dating, and I got a very fine Leatherface artwork for our now shared apartment on the Baylor campus. When our students visited for faculty dinners, we told them the artwork captured our fascination with new age social consciousness and the notion of using art to recast ideas about social justice...and mania. We knew our students were appreciating the general dream-weaver symbolism of such art!

When I returned to the Himalayas, I began meditating on why Leatherface might be linked in folklore to the mystical and enigmatic Lady of the Lake who wields the immortal sword Excalibur. Was Leatherface a new age Godzilla? Was he a totem or Golem of institutional obsession?