The Eye of the Beholder

I’m Syra, and I am a vampire. No, this isn’t Vampires Anonymous, and no, this is not a joke. This is my story: one that I think should be told to clarify many misconceptions about creatures such as me. Not all vampires are evil as most are made out to be. I hardly kill unless the person I feed from truly deserves to die. I am too strongly connected to mortals to kill at whim. There are some that kill because it gives them more pleasure. They torture their victim, making them beg for death long before the vampire grants them that mercy; those are the ones that have lost their humanity immediately after being turned or those who lose touch with it over time. I do believe in a god, although which god I believe in changes. I usually call on Isis, the Egyptian goddess of women, because of my past.

I’m registered as a senior at Brookstone High School under the name Samantha Cross. I have to get a new identity about every ten years so I won’t be a forty-year-old that still looks like she’s in her early twenties. Although I am very well educated from living through several centuries, I go to school to keep up the guise of being a teenager. The first class that I have is World History. It should be a breeze since I have lived through history and seen most of what they teach in their classes first hand. You would be surprised at the errors that some schools are teaching to kids.

I am the first one in the room at ten minutes before eight. I take a seat in the middle, hoping that the teacher doesn’t have assigned seats, and place my black canvas satchel on the floor. The walls of the classroom are covered with posters about the ancient civilizations of Greece, Rome, Egypt and different eras in other historically significant countries like England, Italy, and Spain. Other, more humorous, posters are taped onto the teacher's desk and around the chalkboard to inspire the students. The most popular cat-hanging-on-the-clothes'-line poster with the quote: "Hang in there, baby" is on the wall behind the teacher's desk. I laugh to myself, remembering how witty and clever I thought it was the first time I saw that same poster several decades ago.

The first ones to arrive after me are the smart, diligent students: also known as the geeks and nerds of the school. Three girls and a guy walk in, talking about the homework they had over the weekend and how easy they thought their calculus problems were. Not regarding me, they sit down in the front and get out their folders, pens, pencils, and such, eager to learn. The next group that saunters in is the gothic crowd. A girl and two guys ignore the "geeks" as they pass them, but one of the guys looks at me. His blue eyes peer out at me from behind the bangs of his dark blond hair that hang in front of his face. He wears faded jeans that have holes torn at the knees and a black wife-beater. He, unlike the rest of his clique, has no piercings on him but has a tattoo of an ankh on his left bicep.

I smile slightly, but when he notices the smile, he gives me the cold shoulder. He joins his friends, wearing baggy black clothes, pale make-up, and more piercings on their face and ears than anyone else has on their entire body. They sit in the back left corner of the room, not really caring about class because they are more absorbed in their non-conformist image than their GPA. The preps flock in after the goths sit down. The girls are chattering to each other about the football game on Friday night, the cute clothes they bought at the mall Saturday afternoon and what a "totally awesome" time they had with their boyfriends later that night. One of the girls walks up to me with a big smile on her face. Her fiery hair is shoulder length and pin-straight, which matches the rest of her very skinny physique. Her eyes look like a cat because of the way she applied her eye make-up. She is wearing a tight, gray shirt with an extremely low neckline that bares the tops of her Victoria’s Secret enhanced breasts, and the brand name "Abercrombie & Fitch" is printed on the front. Her khaki skirt comes up to the middle of her thigh. I bet she got that outfit this weekend just to make her boyfriend happy.

"Hi, there!" she says to me in a perky voice. "My name's Allison Campbell. What's your name?" The rest of her people gather behind her to see whom she is talking to.

"Samantha Cross." I answer then go back to observing the class.

"That's a pretty name. Are you new here? You must be new because I've never seen you here before." The other girls whisper to each other as Allison questions me.

"Yeah, I just moved here last week from Virginia."

"Really? How interesting." I know she isn't really interested, but she is trying to be nice. "Where did you get your clothes? They’re so awesome.”

I’m wearing a blue bell-sleeved shirt, denim capris, and platform sandals. I lie, but it’s believable. “I’ve had the shirt since my mom grew out of her hippie stage. I got the capris at Old Navy and the shoes at Wal-Mart.”

“That’s so retro! I’ll have to go to the mall after school. Well, since you're new here, if you want me to, I can show you around the school and introduce you to all the people that you should hang out with: mainly us," she says, gesturing her hands to her friends. "And what people not to hang out with." She and the other girls cringe at the thought of the other, insignificant people that are less important and underneath them. Disgusted at that very thought, the other girls take their seats on the right side of the room while Allison stays to hear my response to her offer.

"Thank you very much, Allison," I say as politely as I can, "But I already know my way around the school and I think I can determine which 'people' I want to hang out with myself, okay?"
She, obviously not being a true red head, smiles and says, "Alright then," and sits with her friends on the right side of the room. Damn, those girls can be annoying. After all these years, some people never change.

At two minutes to eight, the teacher walks in. He stands about five feet two inches tall and is wearing an avocado green seventies leisure suit. His thick lenses are set in bold black frames that almost take the attention away from the obvious comb-over to cover the soft bald patch in his gray hair. I snicker a bit, but stop when I hear the fashion police trying to stifle their laughter.

“Good morning, young people. Let’s cut the chit chat and get straight to business.” He speaks quickly with a nasal tone in his voice, while he places his briefcase on the desk, opens it, and pulls out a worn manila folder filled with overhead transparencies and lesson outlines and places it on the podium in front of all the students’ desks. While he is getting ready and talking, other students walk in, sitting with their respective groups “Pass your homework to the front of your rows, and get your notes and writing utensils out because once the bells rings, we’re gonna be cooking with gas and getting straight into the meat. So much material to cover, so little time to go through it all before your big test next Tuesday.” The ones up front chatter excitedly to each other while the others moan and mumble. “Well, I could let you have the privilege of studying over the weekend so you can take the test Monday, if you’d prefer…” Everybody immediately stop their complaining and continue to pass up their homework. “That’s what I thought.” The eight o’clock bell rings. “That’s the tardy bell, ladies and germs. All the homework is collected, and it is now time to take attendance.” After he pulls out his list of students from his over stuffed folder and a pen from his jacket pocket, he calls out, “David Bartlett.” No one makes a sound, but they look around to find the missing mystery man. “In case you are hard of hearing, I say again: ‘David Bartlett’. Alright then, I guess Mr. Bartlett has decided not to…” Just as he was about to call out the next person, a tall, rather buff guy strolls in nonchalantly. His book bag hangs low off his right shoulder, and his black and gray letterman jacket is not snapped, exposing the t-shirt he is wearing that shows off his chiseled six-pack. “Class begins at eight o’clock sharp, Mr. Bartlett,” he says as David stops at the teacher’s desk.

“Sorry, Mr. K. If you want me to piss in here, I’ll be on time from now on.” The preps laugh at his crude humor.

“Well, do you have a pass saying that you were in the latrine?” he bends his head down and looks up at him above the black frames.

“No, sir, I didn’t want to be any later to your class then I had to.” The preps laugh again.

“Well, make sure you relieve yourself before you come to school, so then maybe you’ll be on time. Do you understand, Mr. Bartlett?” He nods his head. “Good. Now take your seat.” Allison moves her backpack that was in the desk in front of her as David comes up to sit there. While Mr. K is looking down at the papers on his podium, I look out the corner of my eye and see David turn to Allison and they begin a little tongue hockey. He begins to playfully slide his fingers up her inner thighs, acknowledging her new skirt. Then she giggles and without looking up from the podium, Mr. K replies, “I’d also appreciate it if you keep the public displays of affection outside the class room, thank you.” David sits facing the front with his arms crossed, and Allison leans back in her chair. After documenting David’s late arrival, he says, “I think we’ve wasted enough time on that, so let’s finish with the roll call, and we can get on with class…”

Just as Mr. K begins to read out another name, a voice from the back of the class says, “To hell with the roll call, Mr. K. Are we all here?” Affirmative answers come from the students. I turn around to see that the outspoken one is the guy that has the tattoo on his arm. “See? I just saved you about five minutes on something that can be done in ten seconds or less. Now how much would you pay?”

“Thank you, Mr. Crowe, but it does seem that we have a new student in our midst.” He takes out a slip of paper from his jacket pocket, adjusts his glasses, holds the paper up to his face and reads, “Samantha Cross just transferred here from Virginia. This is World History, and I’m the teacher, Mr. Kruczynski. Most call me ‘Mr. K’ because they have trouble pronouncing my last name or they like to take liberties in their own humorous pronunciations. Miss Cross, would you please stand up and introduce yourself?”

I stand up and look around to see that all eyes are focused on me. This doesn’t make me falter one bit. “Well, Mr. K, I think you’ve introduced me already as the transfer student from Virginia, so I don’t think there’s much more to say.”

I begin to sit back down but keep standing as he continues to speak. “There’s a lot more you can say about yourself. Do I have to pry all the interesting tid bits out of you? How old are you, Miss Cross?”

“I think that is a rather trivial detail compared to what we all came to this class to do. Besides, it’s impolite to ask a girl her age, and I think some students up front are getting a little antsy about the highly educational lesson today.” I sit back down and hear the preps giggle.

“Very well then. We have the rest of the school year to get that out of you.” He pulls out the transparencies and positions the projector. “Can you see all the time and effort I spent making these look so fancy for you?” The overhead shows the notes in blue and red ink, and on the sides, there are quick drawings of mummies, embalming utensils, and a pyramid. “Everyone has their notes and utensils out? Good, then let’s start the learning process, shall we? As we all know, and for those who don’t you’re going to find out, the civilization of Ancient Egypt is an influential part of our society today. Before the Egyptians, people buried their dead in holes in the sand in a fetal position.” Then he proceeds to lay on the ground and demonstrate just what he’s talking about. The class laughs as he gets off the ground, stands upright again, and brushes off his suit. “Well, they were; and they were buried with food in clay jars that were placed around the body for the deceased to eat in the afterlife. In later years, they wanted to give the dead a more proper burial. So they placed the body in a coffin and put the coffin in catacombs beneath the sand. Those that kept the bodies, giving them more food so they don’t starve, found that the bodies decayed horribly in their coffins and they didn’t want that happening…”

“Why didn’t they want to bodies to rot?” a girl up front asked with a thick southern accent, raising her hand.

“Good question, Miss DuVayne. The Egyptians believed that the soul of the dead had two parts: the ba and the ka, but these parts of the soul would have to recognize the body to return to it each night from Duat, the Egyptian heaven. If the ba and ka don’t recognize the body, they will roam forever and be lost through out eternity. So to prevent that from happening, they had to preserve the bodies. The dampness of the catacombs emaciated the bodies, but the sand had drying qualities that they needed to imitate themselves. So they invented a way to preserve the bodies with a special type of salt called ‘natron’. They covered the body in this salt and placed it on a slanted bed for forty days to drain the body of all fluids.”

He goes on and on about the mummification process: nearly boring me to death about a ritual process that I was alive to see performed on individuals. Although it is interesting how Mr. K remains enthusiastic the entire time: explaining the gory details with movements that replicate what is done and changing the colorful overheads with a mere flick of his wrists. I look around the room to see the other students’ reactions to this mind-numbing lecture. The students up front are fully interested and involved with this lesson, taking notes and commenting on different aspects of mummification. The kids in the back draw band symbols and other dark and morbid doodles in their notebook. I hear one of the guys talking to an “Aaron”, and the guy with the ankh turns to talk back. Aaron Crowe…what a cool name. The preps twirl their hair, beat their fingers lightly on the desk to the rhythm that they have playing in their heads, and stare at the clock. They’re wondering when this class will be over so they can go back to smooching their boyfriends in front of their lockers before their next class. Allison plays with the back of David’s neck and his ears with the tip of her pencil, and he smiles.

After twenty minutes of discussing mummification, with less than ten errors, he puts his mummification transparencies away and pulls out other transparencies with religious Egyptian symbols, a cat, and a jackal. “Now on to the…” Mr. K stands up straight, completely still, and with his arms crossed over his chest “…gods and goddesses of Egypt.” He then moves back to the podium, his hands grasping the sides of it while one foot is resting on the base of it. He goes on to talk about Ra, Isis, Osiris, Set, and others and what each specific god was responsible for. I ignore his minute errors, but something catches my ear when he made a rather large mistake that I couldn’t let pass. “Now Narcissus was a god of beauty…”

I have to correct him on it. “Narcissus was in Greek mythology, not Egyptian mythology.”

Mr. K looks up from the overhead and faces me. “Pardon, Miss Cross?”

The other students in the room turn and face me. Again, all the eyes in the room don’t intimidate me. “You’re incorrect about Narcissus, sir. He wasn’t in Egyptian mythology. He was in Greek mythology. And he wasn’t even a god. He was a mortal man of great physical beauty that fell in love with his reflection in the water. After that, he fell in love with himself, as the goddess Echo loved him. That is why loving oneself to that extreme is called ‘narcissism’, because of that mortal man from Greece.”

“I don’t know where you got your information, Miss Cross, but I’ve had this information for years, from this text book,” he holds up a thick book with a faded cover and yellowed, dog-eared pages and places it back on the desk. “I’ve never been corrected on that in all the years I’ve been teaching young people such as yourself.”

“That’s because the students haven’t studied as much as I have in mythology, Mr. Kruczynski.” When angered, I tend to be more formal. “The other students that come in hear something new. They expect to hear facts from their teacher, not fiction. You need to research more than your text book for your teaching material. Go outside your horizons, and be the teacher that you should be. Not the teacher you can get away with.” During my rant, I can see him getting madder and hear the students murmuring to each other about the “kid that stood up to Mr. K”.

“How DARE you speak to me in that manner, Miss Cross! I’ve been teaching for nearly twenty years, and…”

“And I don’t know why they haven’t fired you yet.”

“Get out of this classroom and march yourself down to the principal’s office now. I’ll let him know before you get there just why I’ve sent you there.”

I begin packing my things and the murmur of the students has increased to a dull roar. “Before I go down there, could you at least look in those dusty encyclopedias on the bookshelf over there and see if I’m correct? That’s what they’re there for.”

“NOW, Miss Cross.”

“Fine.” I sling my satchel over my shoulder and head for the door. After I open the door, I hold it open, glare at him, and say, “If not for me, look it up for them. Be a true educator and find out the truth.” I let the door slam behind me as I walk out into the hall. The school is huge, so it’s about a four minute walk to the principal’s office. I talk to myself as I walk. “The nerve of that man: ‘I’ve been teaching for nearly twenty years, and I know everything.’ Let me tell you something. I’ve been living for more than four thousand years, and I still don’t know everything, but I guess I know more than you do.” Footsteps follow behind me as I continue to head down to the office. If that’s the stupid man that calls himself an educator, I can feed on him right here in the hall and no one would know. The footsteps get closer, and I can tell that they are too light to be him.

“Hey, Sam! Hold up.” A male voice calls out, and it sounds too young to be him as well. I turn around to find Aaron running up to me.

“What? Mr. K had to send someone to make sure I go straight there without delay so I can be expelled as soon as possible?” I roll my eyes, still pissed off at Mr. K to care about Aaron being there.

“No, he sent me to tell you that you were right.” His blue eyes smile at me.

“He actually read up on it in that dusty Encyclopedia Britanica?” I raise my eyebrow.

“Yeah. I told him that he should at least look it up. What could it hurt if you found out you were right in the first place, right?”

“So, am I allowed back in class for an apology?” I look at him with a cute, hopeful expression.

“No, he sent me to also make sure you went there anyway. He wants you to ‘learn how to respect authority’ and ‘know how to comment on something without making a scene’. He can be such a hard ass.” He laughs and walks further down the hall towards the office.

I laugh as well, knowing he’s right, and I catch up to where I’m beside him. “Yeah, I know. He has such big ego. No wonder I think so little of him.”

I see him smile as he says, “Yeah, teachers of Mr. K’s stature are in short supply.”

“You have a pretty good sense of humor for a goth, Aaron.”

“How did you know my name?” He quarks his brow and has a puzzled look on his face.

“During the lecture, I heard someone say that name near the back where you were sitting, and I just took a stab that it was your name.”

“Good stab. But just because I sit near them and dress all in black doesn’t mean I’m a goth. I wear black because I like that color, and I sit near the back so I’m not in spitting distance of the teachers.”

I laugh again. “So did Mr. K tell you to escort me or did you volunteer your services?”

“I said I’d go.” His face starts to flush a little.

“Why? I don’t think I’m the kind of girl you’re into.”

“The girls that are at this school, goth, prep, or other creed, are too obsessed with themselves. When I first saw you smiling at me, I thought you were another prep making fun of me in the most innocent way they can, if that’s possible. That’s why I acted the way I did earlier. But you told off those girls in a way I never could. You know your history, and know how to stand up to the teacher the way the goth crowd say they would but is scared to do that for fear of what happened with you. As a matter of fact, I knew he was wrong about Narcissus. ”

“Then why didn’t you say anything?”

“You said it for me. And remember I was the one to tell him to look it up after you left.”
We stop at the front of the office. “I guess this is the office,” I say.

“Yeah.” He starts to walk back to class, then he turns back around and asks me, “Hey, wanna get together after school?” He brushes his bangs back behind his ear, exposing his face.

“Did my opposition to Mr. K turn you on or something?” I smirk a little, raising my eyebrow again.

His exposed face blushes again, a little darker this time. “Well, it didn’t give me a hard-on, but confidence is definitely a good quality to have. But that didn’t answer my question.”

“What was it again?” I give him a confused look, then smile and laugh. “Sure. Where do you want to meet?”

“How about my locker?”

“Sounds good. Which one’s yours?”

“143.”

“Really? I’m 341.”

“Cool. So after school at my locker?”

“It’s a date.”

He smiles that warm smile again. “Okay. See you later.”

“Bye.” I watch him walk back down the hall, his shoulders bent forward slightly and his hands in his pockets. I, nearly mesmerized at this point, snap out of my daydream, and I go into the principal’s office. I can’t wait to see him again. I sit and I think that something about him reminds me of someone I used to know.

**Note from Author**
Lots of things edited out from before, but it's all for the best.... More in Chapter 2 now... so READ ON!!!
The vampire,
Aldys Annabel Clairveux