I knew that I should have told Sal and Shar that I had family plans for this Friday night. The fact that the film trilogy was about vampires was fun, I wanted to enjoy the fun, the experience, the chance to go out with my two best friends in Secondary.

I really did want to enjoy the moment and let everything go but my parents were giving me a hard time about not consistently getting the top grades in my entire class. They had this whole usual argument about how hard they had worked when they were young and then dumped all this ambition and desire for success onto the next generation. Me.

But when Sal told me that she had these tickets specially for this event I flared up and shouted back at my own Mum and Dad and regretted when I had slammed the front door behind me.

My parents loved me and wanted me to do so well academically to become one of the best students, even land a scholarship at a major company like Strikker Imperial or go and work as a scientist in the Acqua Foundation started by Liam Acqua. Even working at one of the MMO Video game companies dominating the markets presently with their talk of developing cutting edge NPCs was an option.

There were various chances for a young hard working individual like myself to work hard and gain a good job but that was mostly what my parents wanted. I wanted more. To experience more, to see more of the world fist. To have an actual adventure.

Opportunity in their eyes came from hard effort, work ethic and academic results. I knew that but I was so tired of all of it. I wanted to find a girl, go on some dates without it being arranged by my parents through friends of theirs and just live life a little.

Out of the three of us I was the shy one, the one who got pushed around and gave in a little too easily but I knew that Sharon and Sal were good friends. Genuine friends who cared for me as I cared for them. Sure, Sal’s mum and dad were a little odd for being so focused on rakhasa but in my mind they were good caring people who just loved myth and ancient stories.

They had freedom of expression and had always been nice to me and I respected that. At least I wanted to stay friends with them a little longer before we all grew up and I had to take on a boring, more serious job, become married according to the wishes of my parents and work and raise a family of my own.

I just wanted to live a little, not become wild but a little bit of alcohol shared between friends on a Friday night after a trip to the cinema was a good thing. My parents weren’t anti-vampire or anti-cinema or anything like that. They just considered it from a different angle, business and opportunity.

Even if my grades had only been close to one hundred percent they had promised me that I could go and spend a little time with my friends after drowning myself in study the rest of the week. I arrived at the cinema later than Sharon but earlier than Sal.

There were some girls there from our year group at school who likely preferred the more sporty and socially active boys in our school, in other words not me.

I’d explained all this to Sharon and she gave me a hug and her usual squeeze and told me not to worry. She told me that I’d find the right person in time. A shame that life doesn’t usually work that way, not with my family culture at least.

Yeah. Likely an arranged relationship with a friend of my parents, someone from a good quality family with sufficient resources. I’d have a choice though but it’d make sense to meet someone from the same background and identity as me.

At least I got to choose my friends. Sharon was a good person. The older sister which I had always begged my parents for but they had insisted that they needed to devote their love, energy and attention to a single child. Not that they’d be able to have stepped in school and stopped others from bullying the bright kid, the academic one who kept scoring top of the class time after time.

No, Sharon did that and Sal welcome me as a friend into their group. Both of them were cute but odd in their own way. I was the one who didn’t have an interest in cricket, who turned down the functions which my family constantly wanted me to drag me to. In truth, I was an odd one as well.

On my mothers side my family were known according to myths and legends to have met and even entered into relationships with various Rakshasa. My father didn’t want to accept it as truth and constantly told my grandmother to stop telling me stories of creatures that didn’t exist or had never existed in the first place.

When I had been introduced to Sal by Sharon and she had all these weird and wonderful stories of vampires, undead and supernatural creatures there was an innate familiarity that resonated deep within me. I didn’t have an interest in them, not like she did, nor did I want to emulate them and pretend to me something I wasn’t but her stories, I wanted to hear them over and over.

When I was invited to her parents house along with Sharon I understood the source of the stories that she had come up with. Here was someone who was exposed to all manner of stories, myths, legends and histories as I had been with my grandmother.

All I knew was that when my grandmother had been young, barely out of her teens she had worked in a place on Belphus which she described as a dangerous but fulfilling place. They would try and limit the influence of Rakshasa and other creatures long forgotten on our world. She told me of a woman called Professor Alexa with a man who was her adopted son who simply did not age and knew magic.

When I entered Secondary school my father had made it clear to my mother that while he respected my grandmother I needed to refocus my attentions on my academic studies to try and make something out of my life. To make my family and ancestors proud.

This was why I am sitting alone in a cinema screening room with a skeleton watching me. He holds a staff and wears a robe with patterns and bright colours and wears silver jewellery. I entered the cinema with Sal and Sharon because there was meant to be a popular vampire trilogy.

Not that my parents would have approved but not because of the content but because they would have told me to take a note of all the costs of the snacks and numbers in the cinema and try and work out the cost-ratio and profit. Wait. Did I say that already?

Time is strange here. I can sense it. There was meant to be a trailer before the main film, we watched those then the entire cinema screen room turned into pure darkness and the robed skeleton figure had appeared.

I’m not sure why he would be there instead of a vampire but he acknowledged me with a nod of his skull and simply stood and watched. Tilting his head from side to side as he drummed finger bones onto his staff without talking.

The stories my grandmother had told me made me aware that there was nothing to fear of the supernatural, not truly. She told me that I had inherited the blood of my grandfather who had died before I was born. Once she told me that he would watch over me but to watch out because he had a sour personality. Not a bad man, not a violent one but he was forceful and pushy in his own way.

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I sat in my cinema seat and reached for the pack of sweets I had purchased to share with Sal and Sharon, the bag of pick’n’mix which was no longer there. I still had a large cup of popcorn so I threw a few pieces into my mouth and wondered how long this was going to go on for.

The skeleton began to pace along the screen and shake his head as one hand held onto the staff and another made gestures. The teeth and jaw on his skull opened and closed as I heard visible clacking noises but he never spoke to me.

Then a voice came into my brain, almost making me drop my tub of popcorn before I grabbed it tightly.

[Welcome Trainee Necromancer. Wannabe Vampire. System tutorial initiating…]

I found the courage to speak aloud. I wanted to find my friends and repay the kindness they had offered me. Also, I cared for them. My older and younger sister would need help and perhaps the three of us could leave this place. Back to the cinema and then home.

I would not talk of this night of these events. A part of me sensed unknown familiarity. I knew the skeleton, despite the lack of skin, muscles, eyes or flesh.

‘Hello, I would ask for your forgiveness but I would like to leave. Or you can point me in the direction of my two friends. One had dark hair and is a little shorter then me, one is taller, stronger with a short temper. Names of Sal and Sharon. If you can’t help me then I’m going to have to leave this cinema. I will not contact the police as long as the three of us are returned.’ I spoke.

[Initial Character Choice automatically...automa...error. System Override Engaged. Searching host memories…locked phenotype detected. Corrections are being made to the current host….corrections halted.]

The screen changed. The skeleton reappeared on top of a mountain, standing like it was in a huge storm as energy swirled around and with staff raised to the skies creatures clawed their way from the ground. Zombies and skeletons mostly. Vast numbers, and then they all bowed, they knelt on their knees and supplicated themselves to the robed skeleton on the mountain.

More words forced themselves into my brain. I continued to eat the popcorn, half-realising that I had eaten most of the tub already.

[Initial Tutorial Mode has begun. Scanning phenotype of host body suitability for…Correction. Direct Override of Blood System.]

‘No. We’re done here.’ I said as I dropped the empty tub of popcorn onto the floor. For a second I experienced guilt for leaving rubbish on the floor but I wanted to find my friends as absolute darkness filled the cinema screening room and I lost all vision.

The lights came on as I saw two figures on the screen this time. One was a man sitting on a red chair entirely dressed in red clothing, bald but with red sunglasses and an angry expression on his face. The other was the robed skeleton standing opposite, it was holding the staff with two hands this time.

He had sharpened elongated fangs inside his mouth as his attention drew to me before the robed skeleton raised a staff and struck at the man. There was a flicker as the man vanished from sight and reappeared behind the skeleton who caught a fist and wrapped it in bone fingers before the staff was dropped.

The skeleton simply pointed at me and then at itself before the man in red appeared even angrier and the nails on his hands elongated before he shook his head and waved a hand and abruptly vanished leaving behind the red chair.

My family were reasonably wealthy, they largely came from older money on Belphus and I recognised that the red leather chair was an expensive item. The skeleton waved a hand and flew over to the red chair before stretching out and sitting down.

The staff remained on the floor but also flew over and hovered vertically just next to the seated robed skeleton.

[Welcome new participant. A full blood scan has been cancelled. Your genes are currently being scanned. The tutorial will be beginning shortly. Please take your seat and a pre-recorded...pre-recorded...Cancelled. Please take your seat.]

A pressure made me sit down and the same sense of familiarity relaxed me a little. I was comfortable in a way, even peaceful despite my previous urge and wanting to leave this place and find my friends. I would do at the next available opportunity but my curiosity was getting the better of me.

I spoke aloud, to the robed skeleton in the screen sitting on the chair. This was either an elaborate video game NPC which I was aware from my Dad and his work on cutting next level artificial intelligence. He had mentioned something called CAMPIN several times but had strictly encouraged me not to go and work there nor to show any genuine interest in that particular company. As for why, I had no clue. Likely they had a bad reputation for keeping employees or some other minor complications.

‘Hello there esteemed grandfather. I think we have a bond between us. Tell me, did you bring me to this place?’ I said.

The robed sitting on the leather red chair simply steeped his fingers together and bent his skull as a cowl formed over it and the staff began twirling around as green flickering lights appeared.

Then the robed skeleton did something I didn’t expect. Standing up and grabbing the hovering staff it slammed it onto the floor of the screen it was inside and raised a hand before extending a finger bone and began wagging it at me.

‘What kind of name is Trevor? I told your Mother and Father to call you Deepak. Deepak! Named after me! I tell you boy, you ever tried entering the dreams of your ancestors to coopt their will and make your own known? In my day we raised the dead and were thankful for their labour. Why I saved so much money in my lifetime before my dead and rebirth. Trevor….huh. Deepak. Your name is Deepak now. We have much to discuss boy, you have any of that popcorn left?’ said the skeleton as it adopted the pose of an old stern man with a bent back and a sharp tone.

My eyes glanced downwards at the empty tub of popcorn before I swallowed and shook my head. I had lived my life as Trevor, my parents had given me that name and I was taken from my friends, left inside an empty cinema and then watched a vampire and a skeleton magic user fight inside a cinema screen.

Anger boiled up in me. There was a familiarity yes, but I also wanted to live my own life. To choose for myself my own path. I had slammed my front door and shouted at my parents when I left yes but I was fifteen years old and they needed to listen to me at least once.

There was no way I was going to accept the same from an old man skeleton who had just insulted my parents and told me to change my name.

I stood up and cupped my hands before shouting back.

‘MY NAME IS TREVOR YOU OLD BAG OF BONES! TELL ME WHERE MY FRIENDS ARE OR I’LL….I’LL LEAVE THIS PLACE AND NEVER HEAR YOUR STORIES!’