A horde of zombies came rushing forward before the vampire with silver hair and glaring red eyes strode through them, ripping limbs and heads off with equal ease.

He snapped his fingers and several wolves ran forward snarling and tearing through the last remnants of the original thousand strong crowd.

Higher above a lone hill was a moon that was shifting in colour from black into a reddish hue. A single individual stood there with a dark green magic circle and an outstretched hand as they raised even more shambling zombies to tear apart the lone vampire.

I turned the screen off at this point. The trailer had already shown me the first part of how the initial movie in the trilogy was going to be, action and gore in equal measure.

Not to mention the usual handsome vampire who casually tore his way through an army of the shambling, moaning and groaning undead to kill some human necromancer who wanted his blood to take over the moon.

Or something. There were so many fan theories about how the trilogy was set out, I’d even heard rumours that they were going to include an army of vampire hunter knights. On horses. In armour.

Yeah. Not the most original idea but I’d take it. So would my friends I hoped.

‘Sal. You done with the trailers now? We can go upstairs, head in or you want me to grab some snacks first?’

‘Meat. You need to eat meat. Or vegetable proteins are also acceptable. Stop trying to tempt her into eating more junk food. Oh and I’d like a strawberry topped yogurt drink if you’re buying it. Hold the cream.’

‘Sharon. We all agreed to share. Sal. Sal!’

I jumped up at that a little, shoving my phone into my backpack. My two friends had their little disagreements sometimes and they tolerated me so it was all good.

‘Guys. Ah, yeah. Sorry, I just wanted to pick up any further clues anything from the trailer for the first film again. Research. Sorry.’

They both pointed towards a massive screen mounted on the wall to the right of the snack counters.

‘Sal, I love you like a sister but you but the trailer is right there. It’s been playing for the last five minutes. Do you know that if me and Trevor here weren’t holding onto you while you gazed into your little screen you would have tripped and fallen down like a dozen times?’

‘So that’s why my arm hurts so much. Sharon, you have a seriously strong grip.’

‘Sal. Sharon, how about I get the snacks and you two get the drinks? Oh wow, this place is totally packed out. I think nearly everyone from our year group is here today.’

Trevor was right. Our local cinema was completely packed out. I mean, it would be for a Friday night, but this was ridiculous. Never before had so many teenagers gone to the cinema for vampire movies. Not on this scale. Odd. Fun for odd.

Not that I had a massive social group to hang out with but still, this was meant to be my thing. And tonight I got to share it with everyone else. I might even have the chance to talk to a few more people about vampires and the myths and legends around them.

It was then that my arm got punched, it didn’t hurt as much as I thought it did.

‘Sharon! You holding back on me?’

Trevor raised his hand up slightly sheepishly.

‘Yeah, that’s on me. You were spacing out. Again. I know you love the whole blood-sucking silver hair actor on the screen but are we getting a move on or what? Otherwise…Sharon’s going to punch you. Yeah.’

My friend Trevor wasn’t the tallest or the strongest but he had a sort of presence about him. I put it down to his interest in public speaking since he got involved way back in primary school. He could talk his way out of so many situations it wasn’t funny. Or inspire.

‘Right, right. I just feel happy. Like, this one night is for everyone to learn about vampires.’

Sharon chipped in.

‘Oh, we know a lot. Oh so much about them already.’

She rolled her eyes at that.

‘Sorry! How about this, my parents were happy with my grades so they gave me the cash to buy some snacks and drinks.’

I took out my purse from my vampire style handbag. The clasps were little fangs with edged blood. My card was there and I handed it over.

‘Gift card, specially for this occasion. Spend it or lose it right?’

I felt so happy about tonight, the premiere of the newest vampire film was going to be coming out. This was going to be fantastic; I had asked my parents for the price of the tickets for myself and two best friends including popcorn and snacks and they had agreed as long as I met the right grades and passed my exam.

It turned out that the school itself had been in contact with the cinema and arranged for all the kids in my year group to get free tickets right after our exams.

Hundreds of kids all got to experience the purest vampire experience, maybe they wouldn’t be into it as much as I was but still, it did feel nice to be the odd one out for a change.

I was planning on asking my besties Sharon and Trevor if they wanted to go with me so we could arrange tickets together. Although the cost of the tickets was covered the price of drinks and snacks wasn’t going to be at our own expense tonight, I had to thank the bank of dad and mum for covering us all tonight.

My dad hadn’t been a big fan of me going out to watch the vampire film because he wasn’t into all the supernatural parts of life. It wasn’t as though he was really against it though, he was just more of a matter-of-fact man.

His job was working in uncovering rumours from reality and he was a massive history buff. Do you know the legend of Vlad Tepes? My dad went into all the background about where the vampire myths came from, it had been when he had met my mum in Shanghai in China.

He’d been doing all this research into local folklore and had been recommended to a particular tour guide who had a fetish for really getting into the role. At least all of this was according to the stories that they used to tell me growing up as a kid and I saw the pictures.

My mum made for a pretty good vampire when she chose to dress up, she loved to do the same to me during Halloween and it was our thing until I got a little too old for it.

Growing up on vampire stories and legends was great because from my parents I got to hear the original stories, the old concepts without all the gore and horror that the films and other fictions usually fed readers and watchers.

My dad the researcher and historian and my mum the enthusiast, had the qualities that they gave to me their only daughter.

I thought vampires were just amazing if a little bit sad on occasion. They had all of these powers, could heal from injuries, and even fly. Mesmerise others into doing their bidding, make blood slaves, and create other vampires and ghouls.

Raise zombies from dead bodies with dark magic. Not the sparkly kind though. Do not mention that type in my presence. Seriously, I’d rather be a hair-eating vampire than a sparkly style type.

Oh, you thought all vampires drank blood. Yeah, they don’t. Got all sorts of types. The Chinese ones eat your life energy. Qi it was called. I think they were called jiangshi, my mum told me stories that she had heard was she was younger. I remember her dressing up as one for Halloween and hopping around when we went back to Shanghai to visit her side of the family.

They didn’t take it so well as I had thought and it became pretty serious when they called in this old Daoist priest along with a policeman to make sure that it didn’t get out of control. I never realised that vampires and other dark creatures were taken so seriously when people had strong beliefs.

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Imagine a vampire that could only hop after you with these long claws dressed in some ancient-style Chinese Qing dynasty outfit. Super strong and you couldn’t kill it with a wooden stake or scare it back with a Christian cross. Nope, it would ignore these and try and attack you with a long tongue. You could use urine against it.

Yup, you really could, a disgusting but true fact. My mum got arrested for the crime of public disorder that day and we’d all had to wait at China police station waiting for the whole mess to be sorted out.

My dad had done pretty well considering they all considered him a banana over there, his Putonghua was still pretty well-spoken but his cultural values were the opposite.

All sorts of different vampires had their weaknesses and strengths, the fact is that they all ended up being typecast as these evil monsters, and some of them were pitiful in my eyes. To live for such a long time but be unchanging and limited by so many restrictions didn’t sound amazing to me but plain sad.

I think Dad blamed her for getting me into vampires as an interest, it’s a hobby at least that kept me occupied even if not many people understood it.

It wasn’t as if he helped when he kept giving me history lectures and geography lectures about how the last age had lengthened the nights and shortened the daytime and how it would have been a brilliant time for hunting seasons according to vampire myths.

Recalling one film though about a vampire who was super old and turned out to be the only one of his type that existed made me feel slightly sad.

He kept snacking on the film crew who were making a film around him, when they asked him why he didn’t make other vampires he said it didn’t work.

This one ancient monster was still dangerous to regular humans. He had become so old that he began to forget how long he had lived and how he was created in the first place, that was a vampire that was just nothing special. More like a wild animal than a sentient being.

I always thought that vampires should be able to evolve, the fact that we had all these stories and myths going on about them, but no one had any real proof. It was more likely that humans had simply killed them all as they were a threat to the human species.

Once there used to be wolves roaming around forests, or better yet did you ever hear of a bird called the dodo? Anything that was either a threat to humans or livestock that they owned got exterminated in quick order.

Made for some good films though. Some bad and some good. The main purpose of vampires these days was to entertain us with boring, old humans and sometimes give us a good scare.

The creator of the first vampire book had some great ideas, so much had been created from that one source.

This was going to be a fun evening out. A few hours of my time were spent out with a few good friends, and snacks and I had heard word that the cinema was going to be handing out fake vampire teeth and blood capsules.

The kind that you break in your mouth, and your saliva turns into this fake blood subsitutue. Kind of like a Halloween deal going on, it was going to be awesome.

My friend Trevor had called me up earlier in the day to check if I was going along with the usual crowd. I remember the conversation that we had earlier.

‘Hey Sal, are you going to the event tonight? I heard the film is going to be part of a full trilogy. Word is that it’s going to be epic!’

‘Trev, you’re a good friend but everything is epic with you. It’s just your go-to word when you get over-excited.’

‘True. But still, aren’t you super hyped to go and watch it? I heard that loads of people from school are going there tonight. You know, after all the stress of the exam and all. How’d you think you did with it?’

‘I think that my parents were pleased enough with the results that they paid for my cinema tickets and all the snacks that I can stuff in my stomach.’

‘Wow, that sounds epi-‘

I interrupted him straight away. ‘Epistemological!’

He sounded dazed before he finally responded to the sound of my voice. He was a good friend but sometimes he just had his moments when I confused him. For fun mostly, it’d do him a lot of good getting teased by a girl for when he found someone he liked.

‘Trev? You still there?’

‘…I have no idea what that word means.’

‘You dummy’

I told Trevor before putting a hand on his shoulder to make sure he knew I was teasing. He was all sorts of sensitive sometimes. Price of being smart I supposed.

‘It was one of the key vocabulary words on the exam. How about you tell me your results instead?’

‘…I did well enough.’ He said with some hesitation.

‘I’m sure of it.’ I tried and failed to hold back a chuckle.

In the cinema, I was fully loaded up. I had my friends around me in a few seats, a load of people from school were also crammed in the screen room and lastly, my lap was covered in a tray filled with snacks and fizzy drinks.

A bag of pick’n’mix sweets to top it all off. Yes, I was going to make my stomach sick from sugar and junk food and just binge it all during the showing of this latest vampire film.

The premier tickets had cost a great deal, but some offers had been on. It meant that my parents and other mums and dads had been able to afford to send their kids to a posh cinema where the main movie stars would be attending as well.

Judging from the kids jamming into the screen room I would guess that most of the kids in my entire year would be at the cinema tonight.

My dad hadn’t been too happy about me going to watch a vampire film again though. He thought it would be too violent and give me nightmares. Mum, on the other hand, was a lot more relaxed about it, she said that if I had worked so hard to pass my exam then I needed to play hard with friends as well. I was to study focused and should go out and enjoyed my life more.

A night out in the cinema watching a full vampire trilogy with friends from school and a wicked ton of snacks was according to her ‘Better than being out on the town god knows where.’ I guess that meant that she thought that my mates and I would be buying cheap drinks with a fake IDs or trying to sneak into a bar.

Yeah, no thanks. Vampires were my thing. At least the stories and films about them. It’s not as though they were real, I didn’t fancy dressing up as one, but the cinema provided fangs and fake blood capsules made for a fun scare between my friends. Sort of, they were pretty used to my antics by now.

The cinema staff had experienced it all though, given how one of them yawned when one of my friends had pretended to bite my neck and then bit into several blood capsules. I had tried my best to pretend to be in pain and dying from the bite without success.

The usher came across to me as super bored as he moved us along.

Rude!

He could show a little bit of a reaction at least. I guess that it was the job of working in a cinema surrounded by films that he got to watch that eventually killed off his emotion and enthusiasm. I did like his red jacket though; it was proper smart.

‘Yeah, great job kids. I get that you’re all wannabe vampires. Your viewing is on-screen six. Enjoy your film. Next!’

I didn’t think that he was much older than us. A bit pale though, all that time working indoors didn’t help his complexion out. No spots at least.

Plot twist! The usher used the opportunity to bite all his victims in the quietness of the cinema complex and survived as a hidden vampire for decades until he was discovered by the trio of amazing monster-hunting teens.

One of them became a half-vampire, one a zombie and the last a werewolf. The final battle would take place in the snack area and the police would flood the place to find bodies and blood everywhere. Or not. To be honest my ideas for films were a bit rubbish at best, besides we came here to watch a decent film.

The whole working in a cinema thing could have been a secret cover for his undead life. Not sure how he covered his tracks though when draining the blood from people. That is if he was a western vampire.

Different foods for different tastes. Western enough with scruffy blonde hair and bad posture, bored as well. My theory and film idea immediately flew out of the window as I watched him turn to yet another group of kids to check their tickets. Boring.

I tried to tell my other friend Sharon about it, but she was busy I saw that she was paying keen attention to the rest of the kids from our year group who were buying snacks.

Hmm. Interesting. Who was she watching out for?

Nudging her arm, I told her about my opinion of the usher, but she brushed me off without really listening to me.

‘Hi Sharon, we’re on screen six. Hallllooo! Can you hear me? Hey, isn’t that Mike over there?’

‘What? Where?’

‘Oh darn it. I was mistaken for another handsome guy who is a complete stranger to me.’

Sharon lightly punched my arm. She was a pretty strong girl, so it hurt. Working out in the gym and working on her muscle tone was her whole thing but we had been friends since primary school, so it balanced out. She had her quirks and I had mine.

‘Sharon! That hurt you know.’

‘You deserve it, Sal. The next time that you think someone is interesting I’m going to point out some random old man instead. You know that I don’t take well to teasing.’

‘You have a thing for him alright. If I do I promise to tell you, you never know, he could be in the screening room with us. C’mon. Trevor is buying his stuff and I’m loaded with enough snacks for both of us and him.

‘I think that he wanted to buy some ice cream as well. I’m not that easily forgiving to you, Sal. I’ll get my revenge.’

‘Don’t be dumb about it.’

‘I’m sorry ok. I’m sure that you can catch up with Mike if he’s around here somewhere. Now, let’s get on with the whole vampire experience.’