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“Words have power,” Professor Pelphrey began the Thursday morning lecture.

Clicking a pen, Gael opened his half-filled battered notebook and write the November date at the top. Beside him, Braxton, his college roommate sat absorbing it all in. They both had taken the course for a promised easy A to meet a liberal arts requirement for their college, and had discovered an entire world of hard truth and devastating consequences within the political science course. As seniors, they were not about to change their majors from production management business courses and bio-chemistry pre-med tracks, but their worldview changed every time they walked in the small lecture hall.

“Today we will examine word pairs, finding how shaving meaning can twist a verbal truth to an easily swallowable lie.” The short professor hopped on the table. She vastly preferred to speak from there with her feet swinging than the lectern where she had to climb a step stool to be level with the microphone. The class had adjusted to her style by moving closer to the lecture stage, leaving the top tier of seats in the lecture hall empty. “Words shape the world, how we perceive it, how we interact with it. How we can change it. Can someone give me an example of two things that technically mean the same thing but are very different?” The professor pulled over her black book to mark group participation, then picked one of the three students with their hands raised. “Mr. Wilson.”

“I deserve punishment, oh Father, I have sinned,” the senior said then smirked and continued, “Spank me, Daddy-o, I’ve been a bad boy.”

Students chuckled quietly around the room. Wren, the only freshman among a sea of upperclassmen, gasped at the sacrilege.

“Bravo.” The teacher clapped her hands twice, slowly and firmly, setting her many bracelets jangling. “You remembered a meme on the spur of a moment.”

Marcus paled. The students next to the nursing major tilted a little away from him.

“No, I really mean good job.” Madden Pelphrey shook her head, sending her short hair and earring swinging. “Remember, only truth within these walls?” her voice tinged with exasperation, like she couldn’t believe she still needed to repeat the first rule of the classroom halfway through the semester. “Use every tool you have at your fingertips and buried in your mind. Humor is important in nearly every field; it makes you approachable. Someone else?”

Wren’s hand shot up from where she sat first-row, center seat.

“Miss Faukner.”

“This is something my father did before my mom divorced him over the summer. Instead of saying, ‘My, you look great today.’ He would tell her, ‘Wow, you look better than normal today.’” The freshman, the only political science major in the room, blushed. “He did a lot of stuff like that to control her. I don’t know why she tolerated him so long.”

Rotating her right hand so the outside of it faced the room, the professor raised one finger, her pinky, covered in three rings. A line of rubies on the bottom, a small gold heart with a diamond in the center on the mid-section, and a thin braided silver ring right below the painted pearlescent nail. Then she raised the next finger, which had only a single ring, but bejeweled black and brown and hinged at each joint, the outside of the ring running over both knuckles.

Before the third finger rose, Wren broke the deafening silence in the room, “Oh my god, oh my god. Yes I do know. Sorry, sorry.”

“Then share with the class. And let us know, were you lying to yourself or just to us.”

“To myself,” Wren’s voice raised at the end in a question, as though unsure of the answer.

Professor Pelphrey tilted her head in consideration, then nodded agreement.

Everyone in the room sighed in relief. Gael shifted uncomfortably. Two lies in a row brought punishment, and the professor was creative about it. No marks, no repeats, but each person learned the lesson well. Unless they decided to walk out through the double-doors rather than accept the penance thus leaving this class behind. Two of their classmates already had this semester.

Then there were sixteen. Gael wrote the number in his book and circled it.

He did this every class at some point. The countdown meant something to him, he just wasn’t sure what. He needed to figure it out.

“And… I guess… no, I know.” Wren’s voice firmed. “Two aspects. Maybe three. People are complicated. Maybe more, I’m just going with the first parts. You know, I don’t think Mom ever did anything for just one reason.”

The youthful-looking teacher nodded agreement. “Marya Faukner thought things out thoroughly when I had her in my class.”

“Okay, so Dad was rich, relative to where we live, millionaire not billionaire money but in the tens of millions, and had a solid pre-nuptial. Mom wouldn’t leave that on the table until she didn’t need it. Once she got elected to the North Dakota Senate the second time and made chair of the Appropriations Committee, she was set politically. She also was waiting for me to get close enough to high school graduation and out of the house. I’m the youngest, and I think she wanted all us kids to have a stable childhood… maybe a stable education? Anyway, two days after I got my diploma, she handed Dad divorce papers and put her hat in the race for the real Senate now, which would make her spend a lot of time in Washington DC if she won. She also… I think she needed to decide it was time to stop loving him. Reason number three was the hardest.”

Landing on her sensible shoes, the professor started pacing around the lecture pit.

“Excellent observations. Remember Truth and Consequences, people. Don’t lie to yourself. Accept the truth and the consequences if it gets what you need.” She turned at the edge of the walking area, bracelets singing, sparkles spinning off her many jewels, some glints hovering mid-air before dissipating. One of their precious personal questions had been devoted to how that worked after the group had spent nearly a week deep in the one grimoire the class had been allowed searching. No one had understood the answer, but somehow magic seemed to have been ruled out.

Somehow magic was always ruled out. No one had had the guts yet to ask if magic was real.

“Words had shaped the relationship. Hurt it. Hurt the people involved and those around. Changed it into a different relationship.” Professor Pelphrey had returned to the center of the room. “If different words with the same meaning but carried different intent had been used instead, the relationship could have been building. A cut can cure cancer or kill. Words heal and harm. Shades of meaning. In your reading for today there were about two hundred word pairs. Let’s start with Void and Abyss. Miss Taft, please provide the definition for these words.”

Sandra’s head snapped up from her laptop. “Um, Void is nothing and an Abyss is a chasm, a gulf.”

“Anyone else? Yes, Mr. Quillon.”

“You scream into the Void and stare into the Abyss,” the junior answered.

Gael muttered to Braxton as he scratched the words on his paper and drew lines off of each with the definition tree the conversation was forming, “We have all done a lot of both in this class.” Braxton nodded but remained silent.

“And why do you think that is the case?” The teacher strode across the room to stand in front of Franklin. “Why is there a division between the two with what you can do with them?”

“Um.” Frank blinked, startled, “because you do?”

Gael underlined the words stare and scream in his notebook and to one side wrote, “important?”

“Anyone else?” The teacher’s brown eyes searched the audience. “Mr. Huffle?” she said when Braxton raised his hand.

“The Abyss is a place, like a chasm like Miss Taft said. It is down. You stare down, trying to see the bottom. A… canyon, like the Grand Canyon, has lots of shadows to look through. A Void is emptiness and we scream to fill it; there is nothing to see there.”

“Interesting, interesting. Are we seeing how we shave meanings here?” Her left hand waved through the air like she was cutting bread, then still to hold up one finger, this one had chains traveling down to a cuff around her the wrist of her silk blouse. “But one correction, Void is not emptiness, it is a lack. Voids happen where something used to be.”

Everyone in the room froze. Gael’s stomach dropped. He knew this information was important, but he didn’t know how.

“An Abyss is a place. A pit of hell. A Grand Canyon, a hole and always down and always dark.” Professor Perlphrey continued, “A Void is a not. Something, someplace, that should be something or someplace but no longer is. An example is a death in the family; the death’s impact is like an Abyss. We can see the landscape, and there is a hole in it. But where the person was – their laughter, their tears, their personality – that is a void and is much more devasting. Abysses can be explored, they can be mapped, they can be filled. A Void cannot.”

She paused letting that sink in.

“Words have power. Words are power. For this week’s essay, choose one political speech from each of the three most recent presidents all on the same topic and see how their speechwriter shaved meaning to twist a verbal truth so people hearing the speech might interpret it as an acceptable lie. No one can use the same speech, so be sure to check with each other before you turn in the result on Monday. Now, the next pair of words: Pain and Hurt.”

(words 1,653; first published 10/14/2026)

Madden Series

1. Truth and Consequences (3/17/2024)
2. Endlessly Creative (5/12/2024)
3. Void and Abyss (12/1/2024)