Episode 1.1 "Pity the Front Row"

STARRING:

Salt Lake City, Utah

About twenty minutes in to his lecture about religious imagery in Milton’s Paradise Lost, I was surprised to witness the explosion of Professor Waylon Burbidge’s head. Other than the obvious, two things struck me as odd about this occurrence. First, I had watched David Cronenberg’s film Scanners just last night; second, the sound of the aforementioned head explosion wasn’t as dramatic as those of the myriad heads that exploded in Scanners. It was nothing more than a quick, wet pop.

Despite the fact that my professor’s head just blew up, I couldn’t help but focus on the unfortunate students in the front row. Some of them were screaming as they stared in disbelief at the thick, viscous goo that persistently clung to their arms and hands. Some of them pressed their backs into their chairs, leaning backwards as far as they could go in a futile attempt to escape the rain of gore, and some of them struggled frantically to remove little bits of Professor Burbidge’s head from their clothes and hipster beards.

My eyes narrowed as they focused on the glistening mound of hamburger that was once Professor Burbidge’s head, and I wondered why he hadn’t fallen down yet. I mean, a guy’s head blows up and you’d think he’d be down for the count. But…wait a minute. Is there something moving…inside his neck? It looks like movement and…holy shit! His neck is, like, giving birth to...a slimy, bald head and two arms that seemed to be busily occupied with something that I couldn’t quite see. At first, the thing struggled to emerge from the stump of Professor Burbidge’s neck. I was briefly reminded of a video I watched as a kid that depicted a slick, pink baby chicken violently head butting its way out of an egg.

When it fully emerged, I could see its translucent, pale skin stretched across a jagged column of vertebrae. From the other side of the creature, I could hear muffled grunts and slurps. At this point, the screaming commenced once more. Some of the more sensitive students had finally become aware that some kind of mutant had popped out of Professor Burbidge’s neck. The creature seemed to notice this sudden cacophony and stopped whatever it was doing. It turned slowly to face us causing a sound that resembled a wooden spoon churning a bowl of overdone noodles to emanate from Professor Burbidge’s neck. Despite the fact that my lit history professor’s head randomly exploded, and despite the fact that we were now face to face with a little mutant that had emerged from the stump of his neck, things got weirder.

NEXT:

"MARLA GETS HIT WITH A BRAIN"

Eels: "Fresh Blood"