The camera statics as it was just turned on. Once the screen functions properly and is put on record, we see the inside of a dorm room. The person behind the camera slowly walks toward, getting shots of the room all around, the movie posters on the wall (like Guardians of the Galaxy, Star Trek, Suicide Squad, Batman v. Superman), the clothes strewn about the floor and never picked up as well as some stacks of study books and sheets of paper and the bed with the blankets all wrinkled up in a mess. Whoever sleeps in this dorm is, without a doubt, not the tidiest person around. After the scanning of the dorm, the camera is then focused upon the one in the chair of the desk with his head down, fast asleep from all night of study. This shoulder-length black hair covered most of his face like a curtain as he snored softly.
"Well, what do we have here? The night owl in his personal habitat." A feminine voice whispered in a quiet, but teasingly joking manner as she "narrated" to the viewers. "It is said that they are nocturnal. Spending hours burning midnight oil on boring studies. I wonder what will happen during the mating season."
The snoozing boy snorted and stirred as he felt the person's presence before him, watching him sleep. He reached a hand up and rubbed the sand from his tired eyes with a groggy groan. The person giggled, while still filming everything and awaiting a reaction. As he was pulled out of the dreamworld, the boy mustered enough energy to open his eyes and see that he was being filmed.
"Are you seriously filming me while I'm sleeping?" asked the boy in a low, tired voice, but unmistakably had an noticeable amount of annoyance in it.
More giggling ensued. The person behind the camera was none other than a young girl with long black hair wearing a sleeveless light grey top with spaghetti straps, black pants and standing bare foot on the carpeting. Casey Cooke was the boy's roommate and was probably making a video for her YouTube channel. Abraham Grey was a devoted young student studying the field of parapsychology here at Samuel Adams Memorial University. He wanted to learn about the occult and other supernatural phenomena. His father was a self-proclaimed ghost hunter and television personality who filmed a show called Hunting for Spooks!, where he and his crew would travel to supposedly haunted places to record footage. The show was cancelled due to low ratings, as there was never any ghosts or anything out out of ordinary caught on tape. And so here Abe was, wanting to learn more about the paranormal.
"Have you been studying late again?" Casey asked while still filming.
"You know I have to study for this final exam for the last day." Abe gave a stretch to waken his relaxed muscles and bones as he explained.
"Graduation is tomorrow, you know." inquired Casey. "I'd hate to be the one to film your pouty face when you don't get you're diploma."
"You lie." Abe frowned at her, making Casey laugh mischievously.
"Little Mr. Know-it-all is gonna sob and cry to his momma. Then he'll have dear old Casey to look after him while he recovers." His roommate taunted in a babyish tone and gave him a playful pinch on the tip of his nose. He lightly smacked her hand away, but that didn't stop her from laughing.
"What time is it?" He asked, when his alarm clock suddenly beeped loudly, catching him by surprise. Now fully awake, he rushed over and checked to see that it was 8:00 AM.
"There's your answer." joked Casey.
Abe sighed, exasperated that he overslept from his constant studying. This assignment was just too important to ignore. He grabbed his jacket and some pants as he was in his underpants.
"Glad to know you're in your underwear. But you're lucky there aren't any girls in here." Casey cracked some more.
"Except you." Abe groaned.
"You've seen me in my underwear a few times. Aggravating as it may seem." said Casey sarcastically, rolling her eyes.
"I'm not Chris."
"I know." Casey quipped. "Hey, listen, we'll head on down to the Tim Horton's across the street. Chris and the others are already down there."
"You know I don't drink coffee." Abe reminded her while putting his shoes on and picking up the papers on the floor.
"Come on, my treat." persisted Casey.
"Oh, alright." Abe relented. "Now, could you please turn the damn camera off?"
It was just a walking distance towards the Tim Horton's where the rest of Abe's friends were. Casey's boyfriend, Chris Washington, Rod Williams, Marcia Wyler, Claire Bemoit, Muhammad Ziegler, Waheb "Jackal" Quarjanary, Andre Hayworth and Tyler Orwelle. Abe and Casey were old high school classmates. Casey used to get into trouble a lot and get herself into detention just to be alone, though Abe never understood why. But that was until Casey, Marcia and Claire were abducted after Claire's birthday party. Their captor was a man diagnosed with disassociate identity disorder (DID) who had 24 separate personalities. One was the most dangerous and vicious out of the others and nearly invincible. Abe managed to take the law in his own hands that day and had help tracking them to the Philadelphia Zoo. Casey finally came clean when she revealed that after her father died, her uncle took her in and did terrible things to her sexually. He even molested her once when she was a child during a hunting trip with her father.
Chris is a nature photographer who dated a Caucasian girl named Rose Armitage. They went on a trip to visit her parents in their middle-class home where they had African-American servants. Although, something wasn't right. Rose's mother, Missy, a hypnotherapist, uses hypnosis on Chris to help with his smoking addiction. Not only that, but there was only one black person seen at the get-together: Andre, who was given a different look and went by the name "Logan King", married to an elder white woman old enough to be his mother or grandmother. As it all turned out, the Armitage's were a part of a cult called the Order of the Coagula, where they achieve immortality via brain transfer. They choose young black folk for reasons unknown and Chris was next. Luckily, Abe, with the help of Rod's tracking skills, they managed to locate Chris as helped himself out of his situation. Fortunately, Chris's lying girlfriend and her crazy family were never seen again. A flash from a camera helped snap Andre back to consciousness. But because he had a different brain, he was put in medial producers to patch him back up. It wasn't easy to say the least, but thankfully, Dre was back to his old self again.
Casey and Chris first met when she attended college and began dating. Chris able to trust Caucasians after that traumatic experience with his previous girlfriend. She quietly snuck behind her African-American boyfriend and covered his eyes.
"Guess who?" She asked playfully.
He chuckled, deciding to play along and asked, "Is it Casey?"
She laughed and hugged him from behind.
"You got it!"
"Did you get him up?" asked Chris.
"Oh, he's up, alright." She nodded and sat down next to him at the table. Abe, himself, sat at the table with all his nine friends.
"Morning, homie. How you been?" Rod asked.
"I've been up all night trying to study for that exam today. Like you wouldn't believe." explained Abe, shaking his head.
"I hope you don't fall asleep during class again." Marcia retorted. "You waste so much time writing down assignments, yet you never have time to party."
Abe just sent her a knowing glance before he continued, "Parties don't mean jack to me. Just a bunch of loud music and shit. People getting drunk and laid like it's nobodies business."
"I thought everybody wanted to try something new instead of the usual brand." Jackal exclaimed, reminiscing that wild, obnoxious party at Alpha Zeta Zeta, where Jackel brought cider and cabernet sauvignon, along with cocaine and played Weird Al over the speakers. Let's just say that party flew south for the winter.
"If you though cider and cocaine was a good party mix, you should different get an appointment for a therapist." Muhammad jabbed.
"Yeah, and Avery Smith had his hands all over me." shuddered Claire at that memory of being nearly raped.
"Too bad he isn't tough enough to handle me." Dre put his arm around Claire, who rolled her eyes teasingly with a smile and put her arm around him.
Abe shook his head at the subject of parties, drugs, sex, alcohol and the like as was not the usual "go-crazy-and-out-of-control" fun type of guy. He cleared his throat to get their attention while figured it was time to reminded them of his summer plans.
"Anyway, I have something big planned for after graduation tomorrow." explained Abe.
"Really?" Tyler asked.
"Yeah." Abe nodded in confirmation.
"How big is it?" asked Dre.
"Big enough. We're all going on a vacation to Europe." Abe told everyone.
Needless to say, they were all struck with awe at the news as a trip to Europe sounded like a hell of a time. But some of them wondered how he's able to afford a flight around the continent.
"Europe? For real?" asked Claire in a high-pitched voice filled with excitement.
"That's right. We're gonna start in Transylvania, Romania, then go around Paris, then to Spain, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Hungary, Greece, Turkey, Norway, then back to Transylvania and head back home the day after that."
"Wow." Casey exclaimed with both surprise and confusion. "That sounds kinda expensive."
"It it. But with my savings and salary, it'll be like buying candy at a candy store." Abe assured her.
"I can't believe it! Paris! The sights, the baguettes, everything!" Claire chirped with full excitement.
"Maybe I'll get to work on my French, among others." said Tyler, who was a linguistics student learning various types of foreign languages.
"But who's gonna look after my dog while we're gone?" Chris asked with worry.
"We'll drop her off at parents' house. They take good care of him." said Abe.
"Who will cover ma' shift?" asked Rod, since he worked at the airport and was a busy person.
"You'll have someone to cover it, right?" Muhammad suddenly asked.
"Yeah, but I'll need to look into it."
"Look, my point is that this will be an enormous opportunity for all off us to experience new places, right?" Abe asked his friends.
Jackal responded, "There's no excuse not to."
"How long will we be gone?" asked Marcia.
"It kinda depends on how much time we spend, but we'll be spending three days in each country. So that make it...33 days."
"33 days?!" Muhammad yelped with shock.
"Well, I've always wanted a longer vacation." shrugged Jackal.
"I don't know. I'll have to talk to my superiors about that." Rod remarked.
After it was settled, everyone left the establishment and went about their day. Abe, Casey, Marcia, Claire, Jackal, Muhammad and Tyler arrived at the building where their first period class were. While they were all very excited about their upcoming trip to Europe, Abe was still anxious about that exam coming up and hoped that he wouldn't fail. He sat in his seat in class where Prof. Ellen Ripley was giving her lecture. As a former Marine, nobody knows how she ended up in a place like this. But when the time for the exam finally came, he close to having a panic attack. Sweat dripped from his forehead and his breathe came in short pants. He wasn't to succeed this assignment. He wanted to make it through college. He wanted to have a good future. But he knew that fear wasn't going to get him anywhere, so he fought back the thought of failing and remembered his studies. After the exam was over, his final grade was 100%. He was glad to finally get it over with and not fail. And all that was left was graduation.
Long as he could remember, Abe was the overachiever of the group and sometimes saw himself as a nerd. But for a guy wanting to learn about the occult and how to deal with it, knowledge was the essence of discovery. Seeing Casey and Chris dating, he silent wished he had a girlfriend. No one ever wanted to date him. Maybe because he wasn't too well-focused on the real world around him. Perhaps on their vacation, he would find someone to love and have kids with someday and start a family.
