Free Creepy Teacher: A Psychological Thriller by Mackie Malone

pointed to the left side of the barn. “Over there, we have the Psychedelic Crash Pit , complete with sound-activated party lights and a strobe, for those who aren’t drinking and find Freddy Krueger too scary or too boring to watch. Please be careful swinging on the rope. That’s it. It’s now eight-oh-five. We’re late. Find a hay bale to sit on. Start the movie, Brad.”
    *     *     *
    “This is fun,” Bailey whispered. “I’m glad I came.”
    “So am I,” Eric said.
    “Me, too,” Tony added.
    Eric elbowed him. “Shut it, Bony.”
    Kylie told her boyfriend to watch the movie and leave them alone. That was nice, Bailey thought. She had firmly decided that Kylie Westin was a decent person. Certainly, she was beautiful on the outside. That went without saying. Time would tell if she was equally beautiful on the inside.
    “I can’t believe Johnny Depp is in this,” Bailey whispered to Eric. “And look how young he is.”
    “I’m pretty sure this was his first movie,” Eric said. “He comes last in the credits, as introducing Johnny Depp .”
    “So far, that’s the most interesting part,” Bailey said.
    She liked scary movies, but this one, like most of the horror films from the tail-end of the twentieth century, focused almost entirely on psychotic killers who slashed any nameless, random victim that came within his reach. Only the method of killing changed. In this case, a leather glove retrofitted with five razor-sharp knives.
    Come on!
    Where’s the motivation? Bailey wanted to know.
    What happened to character development?
    Mostly—and tonight illustrated this—the goose bumps rose because of the music. The low-end rumblings of Freddy’s furnace room, the eerie, chalkboard-scraping sound of Freddy’s knives on a handrail, the guttural chuffing and ripping open noises of wet torso cavities…all those sounds of music gave these genre flicks their horror.
    Compared to books like Great Expectations , the storylines were weak, and it was difficult to care if someone lived or died when their best line in the movie was, “Hello…? Hello…? Is somebody out there…?”
    Still, they were fun. And more importantly, A Nightmare on Elm Street , Johnny Depp’s first movie, in which he played a teenager named Glen, was going down in Bailey’s personal history book as the one that excused her for nestling closely on a hay bale in the dark in a barn with Eric Cady, a real teenager, a heart-throb who actually knew she existed, and liked her.
    And Bailey could tell now, sitting together with Eric in anticipation of another Freddy killing, that he was about to make some move. She could sense him fidgeting. Peripherally, she could see the change in his breathing rhythm, could see him swallow a lump of anxiety, and not because of the movie.
    His fingers opened and closed slowly, scratching the dark blue cotton of his jeans.
    Her ears were perked and strangely sensitive to any sound he made. She could feel his body heat against her shoulder. She could smell the cologne he wore, and she liked it. She wondered if he could smell hers. Of course, he can smell it , she thought. The only other fragrance floating in the air is the smell of hay, and fresh lilacs sitting atop a bale of hay would probably smell pretty good to a man. She certainly hoped so. Besides, if she could smell him, then she knew he could likewise smell her.
    It was ironic to admit she was smelling him, she decided. But how could she help it?
    And he was fidgeting more distractedly than before, she realized, especially those left fingers scratching the cotton of his jeans.
    Johnny Depp was being dragged into his mattress now.
    Who cared!
    Her palms were damp with perspiration.
    She clandestinely wiped her right hand on her jeans.
    Then she reached forward just enough to take his hand in hers. Their fingers laced immediately.
    He glanced at her sheepishly in the darkness, the flicker of movie light shining off his face as he smiled. At