Death is Only a Theoretical Concept by S. K. Een

become a walking, mindless
corpse trying to chew on anything with a heartbeat, probably
dismembered and destroyed a short time after death—if he’s lucky
enough to have someone attending his death and doesn’t become a
wild, feral zombie roaming the countryside. If Abe’s family found
it hard knowing that their son had turned into a vampire, after all
the years of being prepared for such a fate, knowing a son became a
zombie and escaped into the bush had to be
heartbreaking.
    No wonder Steve
has such strong feelings about ACPIZ.
    “ That doesn’t make it any better.”
    Steve shrugs.
“None of this makes it your fault, either. I don’t recall you
pinning me to the wall and forcing me to kiss you.” He snickers.
“Actually, more like the reverse.”
    “ Aren’t you scared?” The question flies off Abe’s tongue
before he thinks about its stupidity.
    Steve, for some
reason, nods. “Yes! Of course I am. I hope like fuck it is you because then I’ll know what is, man. What if they never find
out? I’d really rather not go through that again. But speaking to
you from across the room is stupid.”
    That hurts more
than it should, even though Abe knows exactly what Steve means:
there’s not much more terrifying in not knowing why one’s body is
set on killing him or what provoked it. Even an unpalatable cause
is better than none at all.
    “ C’mon, Abe. Sit down. You saved my life, a bit, so you don’t
get to stand awkwardly at the back of my room.” Steve’s smile
verges on the edge of rueful. “I probably shouldn’t say this, but …
well, I liked kissing you, you know. I liked dancing with you. It’s
not fucking easy finding people who are cool with being a
carrier—who wants to be with someone who might make them a
zombie-to-be if the condom tears? Here just about everybody’s a
carrier, so it doesn’t fucking matter, but in Sydney? I liked being
in a space where I wasn’t a freak—with someone who cares about
things that aren’t fish. Or just thinks I’m hot. Or who—fucking
hell, man—tries to distract a not-breathing guy by talking about irony . Johanna was laughing all the way to the hospital over
that one.”
    Of course, Steve
has to yell out the back of an ambulance that he thinks it is situational irony, so he’s just as bad if not worse—and
that’s why Abe wishes he hadn’t come here at all.
    He sits down on
the bed. “If I say that I do, are you going to run for the
door?”
    Steve takes
Abe’s hand in his and rolls his eyes. “Mate, I know you think I’m
hot. It was pretty damn obvious.”
    Steve might be
shunned by people with only a very small reason to fear him, but
Steve has a significant reason to fear being around Abe, and here
he is, refusing to treat Abe the way he was treated. Abe just
stares at him, smiles, sighs. Abe fell hard in lust over a cute
face, a confident hand and a sexy dance, but Steve the person might
just be worth getting to know, even if there’s no chance in hell of
being anything but friends.
    He wants it,
even though he’s a monster.
    Abe’s not sure
he has the right to ask, but he needs to know. “If you don’t mind
my asking, what exactly did you tell your mum?”
    “ Everything,” Steve says in a voice that sounds more mystified
than annoyed. “Why?”
    “ Everything?”
    “ It’s not like Greg’s not going to tell the parentals
that their son was at a gay vampire club,” he says with all
reasonableness. “Fuck, if I heard him right, he knew more about the
fucking dare than I did! And Johanna was talking to Mum on the
phone, right? And fucking Swanston’s going to be telling everyone
from here to Point Marcus that I’m an actual fucking fag now. It’s
come out or go home at this point, whatever it is I—”
    Steve stops,
then, but the missing word is so loud Abe could have heard it if he
screamed it across the room.
    His use of the
slur makes Abe wince: there’s too much bitterness in it. “I work
with him, you know—we