(Digital) pictures of Bob the strangely handsome janitor, and the oddly appealing, or not so appealing, Mr. Anderson, were disseminated throughout the young female population. Certain shots were exchanged and even bartered for, like trading cards. The shot of the janitor's caboose from a certain Freshman class, bent over a counter for whatever reason, was the equivalent of a holographic Charizard or Blue-Eyes White Dragon.
This shot became the reference for an infamous collection of comic book-like drawings… a, in some sense, fangirl gallery. And at the same time, among both genders of the student population, the image of Bob and the nearly purple faced (with rage) basketball coach got around. The photographer, unfortunately, was forgotten and failed to get the fame he had aspired to.
Seras was trying to suppress last week from her conscious mind by drawing bunny rabbits in her Calculus notebook. The whole gang – that being Harriet, Seras, Alucard, and John – had moved to the back of Mr. Anderson's class after the cell-phone incident. Harriet's spit-fire counters and past relation with the priest drove off his attempts to drag them back to the front of the room. So in the back they stayed.
Seras had Harriet on one side, John on another, and John had Alucard on his non-Seras side. Because any other arrangement would have felt unnatural.
It was Alucard's first day back and he knew nothing of the digital trading cards and black market gallery. So Harriet took pleasure in bringing up the topic of Bob, with "So, Alucard. Bob looks a lot like you… He's supposed to be your father."
Facing the wall, resting his head on his arm against the table, Alucard's eyes opened languidly. "Yes. He is… supposed to be my father."
"So you're not an orphan."
There was a pause. "He put me up for adoption."
It was uncertain whether this earned the girl more pity, so Harriet steered away from the subject entirely. But seeing the compassion in John's face was like a rail road spike being run through her gut. "Your dad was pretty popular. Too bad he left."
Alucard grunted. He'd already shut his eyes again.
Harriet took out her phone (knowing Mr. Anderson wouldn't target her of all people) and flipped through her 'trading cards' and other material. A smirk curled her lips, and a pin prick jolt struck Alucard between his shoulder blades. He lifted his head and looked at the girl, across two other teenagers. Trying to figure out what he was sensing.
Then Harriet smiled at him, a very odd sight that caused Alucard to cock his brow questioningly. She blinked slowly, as through fluttering her eye-lashes gaily. "Oh, well. I was referring to the girls, you see."
The cocked brow rose higher. "Go on."
Harriet snorted and gazed upon her collection with pride.
Curious, Seras tilted her head to get a glimpse of what ended up being her master's ass.
"Uh…uhm. Harriet?" Seras' suspicions ricocheted off the walls of her skull, imagining a whole assortment of horrible situations (like Harriet moving her 'crush' from John to…). "Why-" She leaned to the girl's ear to whisper, which only excited the nosferatu's attention – and of course he heard every word. "Why do you have pictures of his butt?"
"Who's butt?"
Alucard's question unfortunately came at the exact moment the classroom fell into its intermittent silence. And the class turned about in their seats to stare at the unabashed girl. Alucard finally looked away from Harriet and his fledgling to pass the teacher a half-mast, unimpressed stare, as the priest coughed. "Would you like to share your conversation with us? Do you believe it is more important and more interesting than what I have to teach you?" (YES – but neither Alucard nor the rest of the class said this.) The priest smirked emptily, wishing he could do more, and returned to writing on the board... which was depressingly unclean, after Bob's departure from the school staff. No. He did not miss Bob. But he might've begun to prefer Bob to the wretched girl-thing. At least he got to see Alucard clean like a maid, or some such nonsense which befitted the demon more – rather than having the monster free amongst the children.
Alucard kept his voice low, although it annoyed him and made his whisper become more of a growl. "Who's butt?"
Seras groaned internally as her cheeks turned pink – somehow, despite being dead, or undead, and all that - she felt the blush but denied it as she made intensifying 'Nonsense. You didn't hear anything about butts. Please, I'm begging you, stop asking' motions at her master. To no avail.
Harriet snickered into her arm, lying on the table just as Alucard had been moments before. She turned her face to the pale, red-eyed girl in a boy's blue jacket and pants. And stretched out her arm with a grin.
Alucard took the offered phone before Seras could think of snatching it away. As he stared mutely at a sight unfamiliar to him, Harriet shuffled through her folder, shielding the contents from Seras who fretted between the girl and her master. John's eyes were, strangely enough, glued to Alucard's posterior. Unfortunately, this was the male Alucard's posterior, and it was much less pleasing to his tastes.
John was merely perplexed as to why Harriet possessed such an image, and was becoming increasingly disturbed by how mesmerized Alucard was by this other person's – her father's? – rear end.
Alucard asked calmly, and very quietly, "So... … So… Hm." He hummed into his fist, slouching over the phone with his brow knitted in contemplation.
Harriet looked over at him, still smiling, "You like all of them?"
Blank red irises gazed upon the smiling girl, and failed to blink as Alucard's lips failed to move. Harriet gave him an encouraging wave, "Go on. There's more."
And so, the great No-Life-King examined this photo album's worth of material. There were no words that could be given to the perplexing experience. But by the end of it, the vampire was quite convinced that this era particularly liked his Victorian (anatomical) composition. For whatever reason.
Then Harriet slid her blue folder across the table, where it came to rest, perfectly, before the vampire. Alucard examined it, then checked the grinning girl, before flipping it open.
He dropped the phone.
It landed in his lap as he stared wordlessly at… At, well… someone's future as an artist. But, beyond that… Alucard bravely removed the multiple pages, holding them, clamped together, until he could bear to move on.
He wished he hadn't. "Why the hell is he in this?" Alucard was referring to the basketball coach. "And- and what are they doing to me-? This pencil is too light." As he said this, he examined the paper more closely, leaning forward as he squinted at graphite etched details. Truly rather anatomically unlikely details, impossible postures – surely that, that would have to require several snapped vertebra (which the vampire, being himself, was quite capable of... however he was also quite unwilling to contort into such postures). In the background Harriet was assuring the pale girl that no females were to be found in this artwork, so she could not possibly be seeing herself in any particular drawing.
John was pale and didn't want to look, but he was looking, glancing, upsetting himself more and more each time. Harriet was calmly gloating. She enjoyed the effect on John, and was at this moment admiring it.
John finally muttered, exasperated and at his wit's end. "Wha- Whatso-" Cough. "I don't get what's so appealing about two guys-"
Alucard interrupted, "Or in this case three."
That shut John for a while. But he recovered and unscrunched his face, though the aversion was clearly still there. "What's so appealing about this shit? Because it is shit."
"Of course it's shit. But if this shit had two boobs- sorry, two pairs of boobs (four in total) thrusting against each other, you'd love it."
John frowned and could not, on any level agree. "But men don't have boobs. So what the f* is the appeal?"
All three (biological?) females gave the boy a look which his obliviousness deflected effortlessly. So two of them gave up. Alucard scoffed, "The way this girl draws, it really looks like the priest has a pair."
This comment punished both the vampire and the boy, as the vampire suddenly recalled his nightmare – the priest's death by immense boob-growing – and the boy made the mistake of leaning in to analyze Father Anderson's rack. John would soon come to know the horrors of the 'priest's death by immense boob-growing' nightmare. Except his dream also contained the basketball coach, who seemed to intrude on many a teen's fantasy, whether that fantasy was… more of the romantic variety, or not.
Harriet asked, her chin comfortably propped in her hands, "Do you like what they've done with your dad?"
Three pairs of eyes stared at her, and she frowned. "I'm talking about the artist. Do you like how she drew them? How she put your dad on the bott-"
Alucard cleared his voice, interrupting the girl. And then he said nothing as he silently sifted through the pages of madness.
Harriet hummed, but a giggle somehow could be heard in the muted joy, "Oh, what do you think? What about your dad? What would his opinion be? From the picture I saw, the real- the actual picture of the coach-guy, those two didn't get along. I've heard that he, your dad, didn't get along with Father Anderson either. Or," she stifled a giggle and Seras' lips puckered in a frown of suffering and confusion. Harriet pushed back some loose hair and sighed contentedly, "Or, no. They might have gotten along, very, very, very well."
Alucard asked quietly, "What I fail to comprehend, is how this artist, or these girls – as it is obvious that this is not the product of a single hand, the styles vary – but how did they reach this… conclusion?" He referred to the exact positons rather than the pairing(s). "Why me-er… my father?"
"Oh," Harriet huffed, rolling her eyes as she gave it a thought or two. "He's the shortest out of the three, skinnier, longer hair – silkier hair, from what I think I rem- nevermind. But, overall, he's the most feminine."
Alucard grunted, not in affirmation, not in denial. Arbitrary… arbitrary. All of it, absolutely arbitrary. And inaccurate.
"So…" Harriet lowered the pitch of her voice, "what do you think? –" she would have continued, but what she saw made her pause.
Alucard had torn a leaf of paper from his notebook, and was now uncapping his pen.
"No. This is how it should be." Showing, rather than telling, as Alucard drew with furious, artistic skill, John's eyes grew large and his mouth issued a WOW, while Seras hid her virgin eyes behind her hands, and Harriet tilted her head thoughtfully. Harriet stood up and brought her chair to Alucard's side, because obviously this discussion was going to take some time.
However, all this movement was not befitting a strictly regulated classroom.
When the Calculus teacher's booming, yet not raised, voice growled behind the nosferatu, Alucard crumpled the paper furiously and shoved it into his lap, clutched in crushing fists. His head was ducked down, his shoulder's hunched, and his perfectly round eyes stared at his shadowed lap. There were not many moments in which Alucard could recall experiencing horror. But this was most certainly one of those rare moments.
What have I done? – No. It was more like, Am I a f*ing moron? Yes. Yes I am a f*ing moron and I deserve this. The consequences of stupidity, not punishment for any sin, of course.
"Let's see it then. You four have been making merry, playing your games while the rest of us have been working." But the vampire's behavior unsettled the priest, and he squinted and worked his features into other compositions that portrayed deepening confusion and suspicion. "What're- What are you hiding there?" he demanded, believing, fleetingly, and somehow… logically, that the demon possessed a weapon (because, what else did a demonic offspring of the Lord's most wretched, fallen creation play with?). It must be some contraband that would surely warrant Alucard's immediate expulsion. But expulsion was not on the priest's mind. It was the children's safety, Harriet's safety – sitting so near the beast. If he had brought something dangerous and worth hiding into this classroom…
So Father Anderson, quite unprofessionally, pulled at a thin shoulder, trying to make Alucard uncurl, but the vampire resisted. Children looked on in awe as Father Anderson slipped his capped marker into his jacket's pocket in order to grab at the girl's arms, and force her to reveal what she was hiding.
Alucard's perfectly round eyes never changed, fighting off the priest's efforts, his mind fighting off- fighting off- Thinking, thinking of what would happen when the priest got the paper.
As Alucard saw the grappling dark hand in the shadow of his lap, he finally blinked and his body revived.
Father Anderson yanked the arms free, freeing also the cupped mysterious weapon – which was immediately too small to be a weapon the Vampire Alucard might utilize. And Alucard immediately shoved the wad of paper in his mouth.
Immodestly defiant, Alucard chewed with his cheeks bulging with paper that was quickly reduced to shredded pulp by razor teeth (vampiric fangs had, and will never again, be so hideously misused). The undead glare fixed on the befuddled hard face above. Father Anderson could not articulate the questions he wanted to ask, and could do nothing besides stare, disbelievingly, at the vampire which was eating something that had – for a split second – resembled nothing more dastardly or threatening than a crumpled piece of paper.
When it looked like Alucard had swallowed, the priest glared and leveled a pointed finger with the pale face, opening his mouth to chastise the demon. But then the vampire choked, and, gagging, lurched to one side and then another, and made revolting, retching sounds that had the entire class standing and straining their necks to see if the girl was actually throwing up.
However, to the vampire's credit, he did not allow the paper, or any remnant of it, to escape his jaws. But as he, once again defiantly, glared up at the now unfamiliar face (the priest's expression was of total incoherence), Alucard quietly tried again and again to swallow the paper mush, to force it down his contracting and un-consenting throat. But it stuck fast. Somewhere in the middle.
Anderson swallowed, as though he knew what the vampire was struggling with, while really he was just so off-put he might even have touched nervousness, briefly. "What do you have to say for yourself? Are you proud of your (disgraceful) behavior (Demon Spawn)?" Instinctively, because they were the hands of a child, Father Anderson knocked away John's attempt to hit Alucard's back as the boy tried to prevent the girl from choking. He could visually, actually, in all honesty see the paper lodged in her tiny throat. And he was legitimately… a little terrified.
And when the class realized that Alucard had opened his mouth to retort, and nothing had come out, while his lips had moved, someone called out: "Mr. Anderson! I- I really think she should go see the nurse. Or, maybe we should even call an ambulance."
The ambulance was so absurd, Father Anderson shook his head tiredly and walked away from the vampire, returning to his post at the front of the room. "Fine. Go to the nurse. Or sit outside in the hallway, and we'll speak (if you can, you stupid demon) after class."
Alucard refused John's or anyone else's help as he left the room, and promptly huddled with his back against the wall of Father Anderson's classroom in the hallway, hugging his knees with his elbows as his hands held the front of his face. Gaping red eyes stared out between the cold dead fingers, and Alucard re-thought his life (or undead existence), wondering how he had come to this moment. With an illustration of sexual acrobatics between himself and the priest lodged in his throat.
He almost wanted to die (again).