Death is Only a Theoretical Concept Read online

Only a Theoretical Concept

  S. K. Een

  Imprint

  Death is Only a Theoretical Concept © 2014, S. K. Een.

  Originally published by S. K. Een at theskimblishone on LiveJournal, 2010. The 2014 edition has been substantially revised and extended.

  Produced in Melbourne, Australia.

  This publication is under copyright. No part of this book may be copied, reproduced or distributed in print or electronic form without written consent from the copyright holder.

  Death is Only a Theoretical Concept is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or undead is unintentional. Any references to persons living or undead do not necessarily espouse the views of the author.

  Layout and cover design by K. A. Cook.

  Cover typeset in Idolwild by pizzadude.dk. Vector zombie image by OpenClips.

  Content warnings: this story contains fantastical racism, actual racism, magic with rape overtones, uses of homophobic slurs and recollections of homophobia.

  Navigation note: chapter headers are return hyperlinks to the table of contents.

  Contact S. K. Een at Port Carmila on WordPress, Texts From Port Carmila on Tumblr, Queer Without Gender or by email: author AT queerwithoutgender DOT com.

  Table of Contents

  Blurb

  1: Dare

  2: Vampire

  3: Attraction

  4: Breath

  5: Surrender

  6: Friendship

  Prequel: Scheme

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

   

  Blurb

  Welcome to Port Carmila, population 15, 725. Half that count isn’t even human, and that’s not including feral zombies, ghouls and ghosts, mostly because they don’t stand still long enough for counting. It’s a melting pot of the living, the immortal, and the dead … where death means you still have to pay the rent, the merfolk are experts in tax evasion, everybody hates the corny Dead Centre of Australia T-shirts sold at the tourist information centre, and the local police encourage you to carry a weapon at all times, regardless of legality. Sometimes the zombies aren’t your much-loved next-door neighbours…

  When Steve Nakamura is dared—after a long-standing Port Carmila tradition—to seduce a vampire in return for his birthday present, he thinks it will be easy. Scrub up, find a hot undead girl who won’t care that he’ll start shambling the moment he stops breathing, kiss her, earn enough money for a new car stereo. Simple, if he doesn’t mind losing a little blood in the process. The cute and anxious Abe Browning, however, is surely undead and just as surely not a girl, and, as it turns out, that’s the last thing Steve needs to worry about when it comes to hooking up with vampires…

  1: Dare

  Jack has collected over a thousand dollars, once the group passed the hat around to anyone in Port Carmila who knew Steve’s name and everyone put in what they would have spent on presents, drinks and a night out. Steve hasn’t even so much as handled said hat, but next-door-Greg spilled just who put in what, so he knows just where that money will go: a car stereo system. Decent speakers and an iPod dock. Perhaps enough for a new laptop as well, if he haggles and waits for a sale—he doesn’t want anything so good someone’s going to break into his shit car in the free student carpark—but the stereo first. It’s the last thing he needs to transform his ute from a rattling, rust-prone, ancient tin can into a car, a road-trip machine worthy of spending glorious hours in the driver’s seat. No more broken tape deck—who the fuck even has a tape deck, these days?—and no more crackling radio that only picks up AM talkback shows on gardening, ghoul warding and investment portfolios. Nothing but pure 90s pop bliss in the only way it is meant to be heard: at volume high enough to vibrate Russian sub-machine guns off the backseat.

  Not that his Toyota ute even has a backseat, but why let actuality get in the way of a good metaphor?

  He whistles while he stands in front of the bathroom mirror, globs a palmful of hair gel and teases his hair into as many spikes as possible. He’s not bad on the eye, even if he says so himself, but tonight he’s got to look killer: sharp blazer, tight T-shirt, awesome hair. It’s got to be easier than dating girls back in Sydney, but why let anything go to chance?

  “Steve?” Mum thumps on the door loud enough to make the family’s toothbrush collection fall into the sink. “How long are you going to primp? I want the shower before work!”

  Only in Port Carmila, he thinks with a sigh, would a minute or two with a pot of hair gel be deemed “primping”. Fucking bogans. Fucking yobbo bogans! “Chotto mate kudasai,” he yells back. “You know Jack’s taking me out for the dare. Unless you fucking want to buy me a stereo?”

  “We bought you a watch and a new handgun, you ungrateful shit.” Mum sighs. The door creaks as though she leans against it, and when the wooden door is less stable than that of his on-res room in Sydney, Steve can’t help but think it needs replacing. Chichi, though, spends his evenings with assignments and tests; Mum spends them with weapons, rags and polish. The patrol beat in Port Carmila is a full-time job and then some; it doesn’t leave time for house repairs. “Do I have this right? Jack’s only asked you to snog a vampire? Jack? I expected something a bit more vindictive.”

  The dare seems ridiculously easy for a ticket to driving heaven: seduce a vampire. Jack has to be slipping if that’s all he can come up with, and it not like he doesn’t have the whole town to pester for suggestions. He dared Phil, after all, to obtain a piece of coral from the council chamber in Mere Illara, and then Jack and Johanna made sure that every hire place for a hundred-kilometre radius was out of scuba gear. Steve can’t help a chuckle at the memory of Phil turning up to the beach with a snorkel, knowing that Mere Illara is twenty metres below the surface. A group of snickering teenaged merfolk chased him back to the beach, waving harpoons, signing slurs in Merish and throwing chunks of brightly-coloured coral.

  “Fuck, actually.” It’s not as though next-door-Greg hasn’t told her: next-door-Greg, local paramedic, has the unfortunate habit of hearing everything Steve gets up to and repeating it without a thought given for medical confidentiality. It was rather nice to go to a GP in Sydney for an ingrown toenail and not have Mum and Chichi know about it before he even came home.

  For a moment he hears nothing; Steve runs a hand across the top of his head, separating the spikes at the part line.

  “Still not enough,” she says, and now her gruff voice carries confusion. Born and raised a Port Carmila local, with more feral zombie kills than Steve has magazines, she’s experienced that rite of passage herself: the lounge room wall bears photos of the day she untied Benjamina’s head from the bollard down on the beach and put her on the mayor’s desk. Debra Nakamura is, in fact, the sole reason why Benjamina is now nailed and not tied to her bollard after an immediate rash of copy-cat crimes. Chichi’s the one that looks askance at the idea that Steve has to earn his twenty-first birthday present, even though he’s lived here for all of Steve’s life and should know as well as anyone about Port Carmila’s stranger traditions. “I never thought I’d see the day that Jack ran out of ideas. Maybe this thing has been going on too long.”

  “I’m not complaining.” Steve rinses his hands, screws the lid on the gel pot and surveys his reflection. Watch out, girls, he thinks in satisfaction, although he does stop to rearrange a last lock of hair over his right ear before he unlocks the bathroom door.

  Compared to Phil’s Mere Illara fracas, what’s a vampire? They’re practically human, after all, aside from immortality and blood-sucking. Vampire chicks are even hot, if slightly grey-looking around the edges, and all a vampire ever asks, should Steve’s seduction skills
fail and he asks someone to take pity on him, is a little blood. It’s not uncivilised like the mainstream media make out, either. Trading with a vampire involves half an hour at the local medical clinic, all nice and sterile, not a glimpse of fangs in sight. A vamp chick isn’t Steve’s first choice for a hook-up—the vampires around Port Carmila aren’t any more interesting than the breathers—but with that kind of money on the line? He’ll even screw Sophie Williams, cursed with a damn pimple army, and Sophie Williams has never forgotten the day Steve, Jack and Phil dip-dyed her braids in blue acrylic paint.

  “Can you use any more hair gel?” Mum folds her arms and shakes her head. Not yet on the clock, she wears faded jeans and an old T-shirt; a polish rag pokes out of her right-hand pocket. Faded scars trail down her chin and neck, shadowed by the soft glow of the hallway light. “Honestly, Steve. Do you spend all your pay on product?”

  “You’re just jealous Nana didn’t bequeath you awesome hair genes,” he says, even though that makes no fucking sense and Mum rolls her eyes. “See you late tomorrow morning, probably.”

  Mum rolls her eyes and steps into the bathroom. “There’s condoms in my top dresser drawer.”

  “I’ve been carrying for years, now. Legal requirement.”

  Mum snorts and shuts the door behind her; Steve grins and saunters down the hallway.

  All in all, it isn’t a bad way to