The Bad Professor

In 2014 Richard Dawkins, Oxford Professor and well-known evangelical atheist, described fairy tales as pernicious, and said that children should instead be taught scientific rigour. In response I wrote this short story:

THE BAD PROFESSOR

There was once a bad professor who didn’t believe fairies existed. And if they did exist, well they oughtn’t. And all the children in the land were afraid, because when the Moon was growing bigger in the sky and the stars were out and if they were unlucky, there would be a knock on their bedroom window while their parents were asleep, and there would be the face of the professor with his helpful smile.

In he would come without so much as a by-your-leave, and he would rifle through their books – again without so much as a by-your-leave - and he’d take out all the fairies, as well as anyone else he didn’t believe in. And into his jam-jar they went, and they got stored, so it was said, in the shed at the bottom of his garden.

And the jam jar got so full, and the buzzing of angry fairies became so intense, that one day they burst out. And they headed straight up the garden, with Santa, a bit out of breath, bringing up the rear. The fairies made a beeline for the bad professor’s study where they found him vivisecting an elf, a pool of elvin tears glistening at his feet.

Now no-one knows exactly what happened next. But the screams were unearthly and terrible, and they reverberated throughout the land, and all the children instantly knew that their books and the fairies who lived in them were once again safe, for the bad professor was no more.

Fairies are not always nice.

 

 

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