Death is Only a Theoretical Concept

Death is Only a
Theoretical Concept

S. K. Een

Imprint

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

Published by S.
K. Een at Smashwords.

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 spend his twenty-first birthday. Home for the
three-month summer with the promise of that awesome stereo
installed in his car before the drive back to campus—and, hell,
he’s even going to get laid for the privilege. Sobo sent enough
money from Japan that he can keep a girl plied with the poison of
her choice, should that be necessary. Why would it,
though?

“
Did
Mum tell you about the condoms?” Chichi sits on the old, fraying
leather couch, his head fixed in the direction of yet another Iron
Chef repeat. He sighs when he turns his head and looks at Steve:
for all that Steve looks more Japanese than he does white, the two
otherwise have only their lack of height in common. Chichi is a
fussy, quiet man who likes dressing gowns when he’s not wearing
dress shirts. How it is he manages to keep a classroom in line is
beyond Steve’s understanding. How it is he managed to fall in love
with Mum is beyond Steve’s understanding. “You won’t meet up with
another topless circus performer,
hai
?”

“
I
hear Jack honking,” Steve says as he picks up a jog and heads to
the front door, not in any way needing to continue the conversation
about Emma and her career pretensions. They broke up, so why keep
talking about it? “Talk to you tomorrow.
Mata
ne
!”

“
Steve—”

He slams the
front door behind him and cuts off anything else Chichi might have
said. Jack, thank fuck, slams his hand against the wheel for
another round of horn-blasting, but stops when he sees Steve head
down the drive toward his rusting dual-cab. Even now, fishing rods
rest in their slots against the back of the cab, the tray filled
with rope, boxes, eskies and collapsible chairs; someone who
doesn’t know Jack would have thought him about to go for a spot of
fishing on the breakwater.

Phil, sitting in
the front seat amidst a sea of hamburger wrappers and chip papers,
snickers as Steve slides into the back and pushes aside the folded
red, yellow and black flag Jack knocked off—or borrowed, given his
claims that theft is only theft at the hands of invaders—from the
local Indigenous Collective. What Jack means to do with the flag he
hasn’t said, although driving around for two months with it resting
in plain sight of both coppers and elders seems to be part of the
plan.