VIRAL LOVE

Chapter 2 - Puppetry 101

Barron's P.O.V.

A gentle knock from the opposite side of the room stirred Barron from his long slumber.

Bertram - Barron's man servant welcomed himself into the room carrying a tray decorated with fried eggs, the fanciest avocado on toast in all of Australia and a cup of hot cocoa to wake him up.

"Time for breakfast Sir! You have Puppetry class soon, golf at noon with Elon Musk, horse riding lessons at 2 pm and dinner with the family at 8 pm." Bertram Said.

"Thank you Bertram! Now please prepare my clothes for this morning's class. I want to look my best and be extra early".

After that healthy breakfast, Barron approached his wardrobe to decide the suit he would be wearing for today's Puppetry zoom class. A green Gucci suit with a matching green mask would be appropriate for the event he thought. After a nice long hot shower, Barron changed into his attire, pulled his long red hair into a small pony tail and settled himself in his study, 30 minutes early to his first online class at university.

The thing about Barron is he always liked to be early, and he prided himself on that. He wakes up early, he was early to his father's coronation as the prime minister and he was even born early, 1 month and 3 days to be exact.

Early, as he was, Barron knew how important this class was to him, even though his father considered it a waste, he had dreamed of being a puppet master, selling out shows every night and going on tours around the world!

As Barron kept waiting for his classmates and professor to show up, he saw a sudden bee pop up on his screen, bewildered by its presence, he tried to swat his screen, then a sudden head popped out, it was a blonde girl, staring at him. Quickly looking away, Barron was embarrassed the girl might have seen him whacking his screen. He was told by his father on multiple occasions that he was too 'soft'.

But suddenly a loud booming voice from his computer echoed "Barronster Gwaine Morrison the Third. Please enter your name". He typed 'Barron' of course. That was his name after all.

Class was about to begin and all his 'so-called classmates' trickled one by one into class. Judging by their appearances and behavior Barron could sense that these kids were from the West. The disgusting West, where criminals and thugs live together with drugs and alcohol as common as sand on a beach. One guy was using a typewriter and Barron wondered if anything about this guy was real and just as the guy went to scratch his head, his fake man bun fell off and Barron's suspicions were right.

15 minutes into class and the Professor hasn't even showed up. He suspected the Professor was probably busy in a traffic jam, but he realized that it was a zoom call and he must be at his house. Suddenly a large brown coloured eyeball joins the call. Confused, he looks at his classmates who haven't even noticed his presence. The eyeball backs away from the camera and a burly man with black messy hair comes into focus. Wondering who this hobo could be, Barron sizes up the man, he could see now that his white shirt has some questionable stains on it, his head is almost bald with large chunks of hair missing and in his hand he's holding a can of beer. What an imbecile Barron thought!

"G'day chooks! My name is Professor Lil Dicky" the hobo croaked.

"I am your teacher for Puppetry 101" he says with a burp in between his words.

Horrified, Barron refuses to believe this drunkard could teach at all, from the way he was dressed to the way his eyes moved slowly and his slurring of the speech he wondered if he even set foot in a school before. Barron was surprised he could afford the internet bill let alone a laptop to teach from.

Accepting his fate, Barron waited for the old hag to get on with the learning. But all he droned on was about his disgusting invention on how he made his beer get into his mouth even with a mask blocking his face. Maybe his father was right, Baron should've pursued another dream instead of puppetry. As the class was listening to his crackpot old fool tell his life story, he slurped up his drink too fast, causing him to choke and fall to the floor. Barron wished for him to be dead, but suddenly the whole class perked up. A girl suggested we scream his name on the count of three. Barron tried to argue that he is of no use anyway. "What's the point even if we wake him up, he's going to be talking about nonsense anyway".

Then they all screamed together "SIR DICKY WAKE UP!!!".

The drunken idiot finally got up after they yelled three times and 'apologized for his little dilemma through some slurs'. Barron, totally giving up on this class sat there, totally bored for the rest of the hour twiddling his thumbs.

Halfway through the class, Mother Linda stumbled into the camera when Barron caught a wind of what Sir Dicky was saying.

"Ooolalala, what a fine young women that just came into focus" the Professor said.

On his screen, Barron saw his mum behind him and turned with full force quickly shooing her out of the study, just as she managed a quick wave and a wink at his teacher. Baron thought this day couldn't get any worse.

As the so-called 'lesson' came to an end, the Professor said "Oh yeh nearly forgot, you have an assignment where you have to make a tiktok video about sock puppets."

Now Barron was excited about the class and just when he thought he had a shred of respect for the Professor, Lil Dicky says "And if you youngsters are looking to get f***ed up on cocaine and a bit of booze hit me up at your nearest pub, preferably in the male toilets and use the code word blinky bill".

'Jesus, what a scoundrel this teacher of his was' Barron thought.