Welcome to Episode 3 of Fear on Demand featuring a short story by M.F. Korn and David Mathew
Read by Glen Hallstrom aka SmokeStack Jones.
Music is provided by Black Pharaoh from the new tune “The Return of the Beautiful.”
“Ten minutes in from the start of the session, and the class was waiting – impatiently. A few students had started to repack their equipment – their spiral notebooks, their ballpoints; one had clicked on the Shut Down option on his laptop. The atmosphere was pricklish.
For the first time since the beginning of the semester, their grad film student teacher was late.
When the young man finally entered, the group became wildebeest, nervously sensing rain. Something was obviously different.
“Let’s settle,” said the young man. And he introduced the subject of the day’s lesson: “The Red Spectre – by an unknown director, but I think it is actually by George Melies.”
After a brief preamble he added: “Could somebody get the lights?”
The film ran. The print was grainy.
But it was clear enough for the young man to see all that he needed to stir the hour-dead lunch in his belly. Only the students seated closest to him, however, in the first two rows, heard him mutter, “Jesus God” at the screen that was beaming out into the gloom.
The reels nimbly circled. And it was on them that the young man settled his gaze – for comfort – when he knew for certain that he could take no more of what the film had to offer… “
Fear on Demand Horror Podcast 