Phips felt the wind knocked out of him as she pressed him hard against the wall. He'd barely turned the key in the lock before she was on him pushing him through the opening door, kissing, her hands clawing over his shoulders and down to the hem of his T-shirt, her breath soft and hot as it flowed out of her nose.
He'd left his jacket and tie at the office, forgotten in his shock and the frenzy of wanting to get her away—someplace where he could have her all to himself.
In the car she had undone the buttons of his shirt one by one so that when they pulled into the driveway of his little house, he'd simple shrugged out of it and left it in the driver's seat as he'd chased her up the steps to the front door.
Her tongue pressed between his lips and he sucked on it, closing his eyes, listening as he heard her skillfully kick the door closed behind them. He pressed on her shoulders, and she pulled away with a sudden moan of disquiet.
"Wow, you're in a hurry," he said, jokingly straightening up and moving his arm around her waist lifting her lithe little frame up so that she was nearly on tip-toe.
She was light. He'd always imagined she would be—from the moment she'd distinguished herself in class, he'd imagined what it would be like to hold, her lift her up, feel her come down, her hips straddling his. All those smoldering stares, those little smiles he'd thought he'd imagined...
He ran a hand down and kneaded her buttocks through the denim of her jeans, breathing in the sweet smell of her. He kissed her slowly, patiently, and he could feel her squirming in his embrace. Her hands were at his shoulders and then at her side and then she was reaching up as if to hold his head in her palms but she thought better of it. He smiled at her awkward girlishness.
"Relax," he said, rubbing the tip of his nose against hers, smiling and watching her smile. "I'm not going to bite."
*****
He'd been working on the book for almost two years, spending his summers away from the college doing research in New England
It had been early in the fall, the leaves had not yet turned and he'd begun the year as he'd begun the last three, a few more chapters of his book completed and a full load of classes to teach. They'd given him a new office—smaller but he didn't have to share with anybody.
He'd noticed her in class, sitting at the back, her attention duly paid, her questions topical when she deigned to ask them. Of course, he'd noticed how pretty she was but the class was peppered with pretty girls and, after three years as a lecturer, he'd stopped fantasizing, for the most part, about having them.
"Superstition," he said, going into the familiar start of his opening lecture. "Folklore, Myth, the Occult, the Paranormal, the Preternatural," he'd turned from the whiteboard where he'd written his name. "What fascinates us about them? Why do these old wives' tales from the ancient traditions seem never to die but again be reborn and reanimated in our modern culture? Our pop-culture fascination with werewolves, vampires, ghost, goblins, and things that go bump in the night—it seems endless. And what draws you all, in your collegiate co-ed curiosity, to my class to learn about these mythical creatures?"
A few laughs and a few hands were raised. He called on a young man in the front.
"Immortality," the man said. "I think we all like them 'cause a lot of them can live forever."
Phips wagged a finger. "Not so," he said, checking the seating chart. "Mr. Butler, is it?"
The young man nodded.
"In fact, as we will learn, in most folklore the undead, as they are called, only rise to haunt the living for a brief period of days, weeks, or even months. Only very recently have the myths about vampires and werewolves evolved to include immortality as a requisite about the undead."
Walking around and leaning on the table at the front of the room, he pointed to another hand, a young woman with blonde hair.
"They're sexy," she said, in response, lowering her hand slowly. "Vampires, I mean. They have this sort of strong mojo that's so hot!"
Phips smiled, "You're confusing vampires with the actors who play them, Miss..." he looked down at the seating chart, "Miss Grayle." He folded his arms and continued. "In fact, most folklore concerning preternatural creatures describes them as grotesque—disembodied heads or rotting corpses with mangled, mutated features. The super-sexualized representation of the vampire in film and literature is something we can blame almost entirely on Bram Stoker."
Phips looked up to see the last hand, hers, halfway raised at the back. "Yes, Miss..." he looked at the chart, "...Miss Brown," he said, noting the interesting first name. "Miss Mercy Brown," he said it with a smile.
She lowered her hand, addressing her answer directly to him, leaning back in her chair in a way that came off as rebellious, as if she already knew all there was to know about this subject and him. "It's simply human nature to fear the unknown," she said, looking down to where she let her fingers trace a couple of little hearts carved into the wood of the little half-desk. "Things people don't understand they fear and label as magical or supernatural. We," she paused, "we don't know why we're afraid of the dark or why that fear intrigues us so. It... It just does."
Phips cocked his head, "Spooky," he said with a smile, aimed in her general direction.
The class laughed and he straightened and cleared his throat. "However, that is a bit of a philosophical truth. Perhaps factual events started these myths. In fact, perhaps all beliefs spread from some phenomenon we simply have yet to grasp as a culture. It is enthralling to think about it."
*****
It was three weeks into the semester when she came to his office. It was after the class meeting, around seven in the evening.
"Professor, can I speak to you?"
He nodded and pointed to the chair by the desk. He took out the package of Twizzlers he kept for students and offered her one. She took it and held it as she sat, letting her book bag drop to the floor beside her.
"What's up, Miss Brown?" Phips asked, leaning back in his desk chair and waiting.
She looked up from the uneaten Twizzlers in her hand, her green eyes meeting his brown ones. "I—I wanted to," she looked back down. "You're writing a book?"
Phips put his hands up on his head, studying her. "Who told you that?"
She shrugged. "I was just told you were writing one, does it matter who told me?"
Phips took his hands down and leaned forward. "It's not finished yet, so I don't like talking about it. Don't you have questions about the class?"
She reached out the hand with the Twizzler and let the red ropey candy lay on the edge of the desk. "What's the subject of the book, Mr. Phips?"
Phips' eyes narrowed and he shrugged, there was no harm in telling her, his author vanity could allow it. "Historical instances of vampirism... community reactions to said instances..."
"Specifically?" She looked up from her hands.
