Alejo [Vampire]

Alejo- Chapter 9

::CHAPTER 9::

The room glowed a faint blue. The volume was low but I could hear everything the actors said. I looked at the SmartVision screen. Transfixed. There was so much to learn from movies. The facial expressions weren’t enough. I needed more. Body language, eye contact, different stares, tones, facial muscle control. It was an entirely different language. A language that was very important to learn.

I didn’t shift my focus on the three dimensional screen. Samuel walked over and peered at it before taking a seat. For a long time he didn’t say a word. He simply sat and watched. He was perplexed. I could tell. Once in a while I felt his eyes on the back of my neck before they shifted to the movie again. Finally, it seemed that he absolutely had to say something.

“Sir, what are you doing?”

“I thought it was obvious.”

“On the surface yes. You’re clearly watching a movie. What I’m asking is why?” Samuel’s attention fell on the screen again.

“I am studying, Sam,” I replied, “Movies are meant to mimic life…to an extent. I think this is the best way to study normal people. Understand their reactions better.”

“And we’re watching a romance because…” he trailed off in the hopes that I would fill in the blanks.  I stared.

“I didn’t think the movie’s genre would be of import. Is it?”

“Are you being sarcastic or is that an honest question? I can never read you.”

“Honest question,” I turned to the screen again and watched the movie unfold.

“Well it is important, sir. Each movie genre shows humans in a different light. A horror would show them in a state of fear and desperation. It would show humans at either their strongest or most vulnerable. Sometimes their most irrational. A romance on the other hand is surrounded by devotion and compassion. Often it’s about making a choice that causes emotional pain.”

“Pain? How can an emotional choice cause pain?” I looked at him.

Sam looked at me long and hard. He seemed torn. I think he was afraid that his answer would lead me to bring it into play for my own uses. I chuckled flipping a strand out of my eyes, “Oh Sam. Don’t you already know that I have far more interesting ways to hurt than love?” Shaking my head I rest it on the pillows.

“Tell me about this movie,” he said instead of answering.

“It’s about this poor artist who meets this wealthy woman on a ship. We’re at the part where she’s saved from drowning after the ship sunk in the end. Very very sad.”

“Do you think so?”

“That’s what I read,” was the reply, “I personally thought it was a waste. I sat for over an hour watching these two flirt and frolic and what happens? He drowns and dies. Pointless.”

“I wouldn’t call it pointless.”

“Earlier in the movie he almost died from drowning while he was chained up but they saved him…for what? He drowned in the end anyways. And his second drowning was worse than his first almost-drowning so if they’d just let him die earlier the movie would have ended faster and I could make some sense of it.”

“It’s not about making sense. It’s about making romance.”

“Is romance without sense then?”

“Often times, yes. People may fall in love with others who are nothing like them. Who might cause them to risk their life to help them. Who are absolutely no good for them. But when the heart speaks, it won’t shut up until it’s heard…and even then it still screams its desires. Perhaps the movie showed that it was better to die with a lover than to die alone.”