My First Good One

Short Story by Ralph Greco

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A perfectly crisp October afternoon; blue zipped-up windbreaker, requisite brown corduroy pants I had worn to school that day, sneakers, the smell of burning leaves in the air, and my best friend Art and me, once again at the local library. As it was Tuesday, we were sitting cross-legged on that springy green carpet in the back room, anticipating the usual “Horror Tuesday.” 

Art and I were the closest of buddies, in a way that at eleven, you will never be with anybody ever later in life. And even though we had our particular likes and dislikes (Art was a nut for “Hogan’s Heroes,” and I a Trek freak), we did share a love of reading and old horror movies. A handful of years away yet from the visceral cornucopia of "splatter" films, or parts 1-never-ending of modern bogeymen franchises, and a little too young to see anything like a “Tales From The Crypt” or “Last House On The Left”—although surely, we had heard about these movies—my blond-haired friend and I were relegated to watching horror flicks on television for sustenance. We grew up with Frankenstein and the very English "Hammer Horror" film adaptations of Poe’s works, starring the wonderful Vincent Price eating scenery across a full-featured week at a time on the “4:30 movie,” or scared ourselves witless come Saturday night watching first “Chiller Theater” with that manic six-fingered Claymation hand and then “Creature Features.” Digesting all that older stuff, back-and-white films didn’t put us off, and silent films, while an oddity for sure, wouldn't keep us from watching a good horror film.