(Usual Disclaimer Time: All the characters in this story are 18 years old or older, and since we're living in the wide wonderful world of porno-land here, where clichés roam free and things might get a little unrealistic from time to time, please remember it's all in good fun.)
(Author's Note: As a reminder, this story is a limited series with a light canon, meaning that while the chapters will all be related by characters and location, it won't be explicitly necessary to read every chapter to know what's going on. Each chapter will be its own thing, and can be enjoyed independently. I hope you enjoy! I also want to give special thanks to fellow Literotica author and SYM reader Lil_kitty for many excellent ideas and acting as a second set of eyes on this story, and for letting me know what did and didn't work; if you get a chance, please check out her work and drop some stars if you enjoyed, she writes some very hot and fun stories.)
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For a small town with a modest population, Briar's Mill boasted three separate movie theaters that pulled a reasonable business from surrounding towns. The biggest was of course the multiplex at the Briar's Mill Mall, with ten screens and showing all of the most recent hits. At the edge of town was the Firecracker Drive-In, which was less a drive-in theater and more a large, weed-choked lot with screens on either side of it. The audio systems rarely worked 100%, and the movies they showed were generally six months out of date, but nostalgia kept it from ever shutting down entirely.
It was on Main Street, nearly perfectly in the center of town, where the pride and joy of Briar's Mill's theaters sat. The Camelot Theater, a single screen theater built back in the 1930s, glowed with flashing lightbulbs and neon lights as a beacon of cinema's fabled golden age. The seats inside were cramped, and the paint and vaguely medieval decorations had truly seen better times, but an avid fanbase of old-timers and hipsters alike kept it afloat when so many similar theaters had fallen. With a modern concessions booth and a mostly modern digital sound system and projector, it kept up with bigger theaters admirably, and attending a late night showing of the most recent big release or classic in need of some new attention had been a rite of passage for Briar's Mill youths for ages.
On Halloween night, rather aptly, it was airing John Carpenter's 1978 Halloween all night, a tradition the nostalgia audience had kept going for nearly a decade now. Enthusiastic audiences filled the theater to be scared by (or at least mock) the classic horror film, keeping all of those who worked the Camelot rather busy for the holiday.
Well, most of them, anyway.
Sitting in the small, quiet projection booth, Sean Donner eyed the digital projector and made sure that, yes, it was still working. As opening credits rolled across the screen and the eerie synthesizer score played over the creepy image of a jack-o-lantern that floated ever closer to the camera, Sean made sure to join the audience in cheering Jamie Lee Curtis' name before getting back to 'work', even if that work meant babysitting the projector and making sure it didn't catch fire. The projection booth itself was spacious enough to be comfortable, since it was made to hold the many film reels of older days, but with those gone, it now had room for a couple of clean couches, a refrigerator, and a desk with a laptop loaded with games. Dressed in the usher's uniform of a long-sleeved, button up blue shirt and dark pants, he was ready for anything, and expecting nothing as on most nights. Ideally, he would have been watching the projector the whole time and ensuring that nothing went wrong, but since that pretty much never happened, he usually just had to wait for complaints.
It was the waiting that was the hardest part nowadays, because waiting meant that he was stuck with his thoughts, and all of his thoughts these days were stuck on Anna.
His hand hovered over his phone, tempted to once more pull it out and look at the two of them in happier times. He even pulled the phone out once, nearly unlocked the screen, but soon quickly pocketed it.
"She's moved on, you gotta move on too. That's the healthy way to handle this," he repeated, though finding it easier said than done.
Anna was his first girlfriend. They'd dated for three months. She was pretty, and nice, and fun, and she'd made him feel handsome when he'd never truly felt it before. In the abstract, he knew it to be true. He had a decent face, not movie star good looks or anything, but at least memorable, with dark hair, striking blue eyes and a smile that could very nearly look confident. At just over six feet tall and being a guy who semi-frequently hit the gym with his friends, he knew intellectually that he wasn't bad looking, but it was Anna who actually made him feel that way and... to suddenly feel unwanted by the girl who'd built him up and he'd lost his virginity to... yeah, it was a definite hit to the ego.
He knew he carried his share of the blame. She wanted him to be around more, and he was working his ass off, saving up for college. He'd thought he'd be able to balance these two aspects of his life, but in the end, it just didn't shake out that way. Anna wanted more of his time than he was willing to give up, and in the end a breakup made sense.
That didn't stop his hand from finding the phone again, nor him wanting to plead to get her back. It was stupid, he knew it, and like Miguel always said, there were plenty more "chicks in the sea" (Miguel's bad metaphor, not Sean's), but it didn't stop things from feeling just a little bit hopeless. And he'd so been looking forward to Halloween...
The phone vibrated. Perhaps a little too quickly, Sean picked it up.
It was a text from Sadie.
SADIE: Going to get revenge for you now. Wish me luck!
Sean scowled, but knew better than to try to stop his best friend once she set her mind to something.
SEAN: Just don't hurt anyone.
That was probably too much to ask for, but he didn't know what else to do. Still, it felt nice that Sadie had his back, and it was with a smile that he put his phone away.
There was a knock on the booth's door. Getting up from his stool next to the projector, Sean straightened out his uniform and sighed, hoping that it wasn't the manager, Mr. Guinness, with some last-minute notes to give Sean. Mr. Guinness was, after all, taking the night off to be with family, but the theater having been in his family for generations made him an accomplished micro-manager. Leaving it in the hands of a bunch of high school students wasn't his dream scenario, but he trusted Sean well enough to captain the ship.
Steeling himself for the potential confrontation, Sean unlocked and opened the projection booth's door.
Thankfully, Mr. Guinness wasn't there.
There was, however, a sheet ghost wearing a large pair of 70s eyeglasses over the holes. Knowing enough of the movie reference that the joke-player was going for, Sean sighed.
"Aren't you a little short to be Michael Myers?" Sean asked the 5'4" sheet ghost before turning back into the projection booth.
"You're not even a little scared?" she protested, pulling off her costume and revealing his coworker, 18-year-old June Poole. A cute brunette with a bright smile and big green eyes, her mid-back-length hair was held back by a hair tie in a loose ponytail. Wearing a uniform shirt that always seemed slightly too tight across her immense chest, she had always had a way of catching people's eyes. When they'd first started working together, she'd always teased him for not looking at her chest, but the moment he began dating Anna she kept remarkably respectful for someone who considered themselves a practical joker.
June had been a good friend for him since the breakup, even though he knew he couldn't say that he'd been the same to her.
"Not even a little," he replied. "You've come up here to hang?"
"Yeah," the usher replied, closing and locking the door behind her and tossing her costume and purse on the floor before going over to plop down on one of the couches. "The house seems in order, but if anything comes up, I'll stop it."
For a small girl, she had a remarkable talent for breaking up fights and kicking people out. Sean replied, "I know you will."
She sighed. "Not even a *little* bit scared? Do you have any idea what I had to do to find those 70s glasses? I had to do some terrible shit."
Sean laughed. "Sorry. It was a good costume, though. You should've taken it out to the carnival."
