THE VAMPIRE UNDERGROUND

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER TWO

Brin grabbed Ash’s hand and almost fell backward onto the ugly beige carpet.

“Sorry, did I scare you?” the young teacher said, removing the grotesque, realistic vampire mask from his face.

“Yeah, I’d say so,” she said, trying to catch her breath. “What if I had died from fright? My family could have sued you.”

The teacher shrugged. “That was a risk I was willing to take. Nice to meet you both. Please… take a seat.”

The man sauntered to the front of the classroom, as more students stumbled inside.

“You want to sit in the front or back?” Brin said to Ash.

“The front, of course! Are you nuts? I’m not watching Citizen Kane from the back of the classroom!”

They made their way up the middle aisle, where, lo and behold, two seats together in the front row were still vacated. Brin focused on the empty seats, while Ash’s attention turned toward the giant pull-down screen straight ahead.

“It’s so… big,” Ash said.

“What is?”

“The screen. It’s perfect!”

They quickly nabbed the empty seats, and Brin turned around to get her first look at the other students. Every seat was taken. Most classes she attended at Grisly High had twenty to twenty-five students. This class had at least thirty. Most of the students must have been seniors, since she only knew one other person in the class besides Ash.  

“Wicked,” Ash said.

Brin turned back around. “What is?”

“Turns out that little vampire schtick wasn’t just a cheap joke.”

“What do you mean?”

Ash pointed forward. “Look.”

Brin did. And disappointment hit her immediately. At the front of the class were framed movie posters for Interview with the Vampire and The Lost Boys. On the side were posters for Night of the Living Dead, Halloween, The Wolf Man, and Alien.  On the back wall was a poster for Psycho.

“Oh no,” Brin said. She looked at one poster after another. She was starting to see a connection between all these movies.

“Oh yes.”

“It can’t be—”

“This is like a wet dream,” Ash said, before the sound of the bell erupted above them, and the teacher excitedly made his way to the front podium.

“OK, everyone, quiet down. Hello. My name is Mr. Barker. Welcome to Intro to Film!”

He was young for a teacher, probably no older than thirty. He wore a tight blue sweater above his Dockers pants, and sported shoulder-length blond hair that passed over the temples of his black-framed glasses.

Most of the students nodded at the teacher. One of them said, from the back, “You really like horror movies, don’t you?”

Some chuckles permeated the room. “I do,” Mr. Barker said. He slammed a large stack of papers on his desk. “And I hope all of you do, too.”

“Why is that?” a young girl said from the side.

“Because, for the next twenty weeks, we’re going to be watching, analyzing, and discussing horror movies!”