Death is Only a Theoretical Concept Read Online Free Page B

of
being five hundred years old.” Telling himself that reluctance is
pointless, he takes the offered hand. “Steve Nakamura, and, no, I
probably shouldn’t have been named Akira or Hiro or ... something.
Don’t ask me to write my last name in kanji, either. I failed high
school Japanese.”
    Abe laughs. He
has a firm, but not crushing, handshake, and he’s apparently more
than content to let his grip linger.
    Shouldn’t this
be a little more difficult?
    “ If
you don’t mind my asking, what was it like growing up with a
vampiric great-aunt?”
    Abe’s smile, for
all that his lips have that cyanotic, bloodless quality, is quite
appealing; amusement almost negates the fish-like quality of his
dead eyes. “You know all the ‘back in my day things were so much
better because we conveniently forget that people died of chicken
pox and anyone who was not a white cishet man had no rights’
stories? I swear, every time she tells me that life was simpler in
the 1800s, I want to beat her over the head with the collected
works of Oscar Wilde—except my phone isn’t going to hurt her.” His
smile broadens. “One time my cousin Valentine sat down with his Famous Five books, read out half-a-dozen passages describing
George, and told Lizzie that if this is how a white breather
trans boy is treated in the 1940s, how can she dare say to his face
that life was better way back when? It silenced her for about, oh,
half an hour.”
    Oh, he knows
those tales, all right. Sofu pulls one out every time he asks one
of Steve’s aunts to get him on Skype, apparently oblivious to the
fact that the technology he despises is the only thing that enables
him to chat with his son and daughter-in-law in Australia. “When I
was young, it was a time-honoured occupation to look after one’s
grandparents and honour one’s ancestors, and all we ever ate was
rice and seaweed, and we were so much the better for it … compared
to today’s wild, spoilt and disrespectful youth? Who run off to
Australia and shack up with blonde broads?” He grimaces. “My best
mate’s girl lived in a hut in the bush for about a hundred and
fifty years because when she died, it was fucking law to dismember
and burn all zombies on sight. Sure, shit was so civilised
then!”
    “ Times a factor of about a hundred for all the extra years
she’s lived, of course.” Abe shrugs, still grinning. “It scares me
stupid to think that one day, I’ll be doing that to my sister’s
great-great-great grandchildren while they sit there, roll their
eyes, and later talk about me to some stranger they meet in a gay
bar ... if they have gay bars, then.”
    Along with age,
Steve learnt in prep—before he learnt how to write his own
name—never to ask a vampire how they were turned: it is just good
manners, quite aside from not really being anyone’s business. Steve
can’t help a little curiosity, though: Abe’s assumed age suggests a
recent turning. Perhaps while he was at university? Did his aunt
turn him? At least his family are comfortable around vampires, when
most humans aren’t—which is probably why he chose to be turned in
the first place, come to think of it.
    It occurs to him
that there’s something quite racist and lifeist, if not also
homophobic, in the nature of Jack’s dare. One thing to have a bit
of fun with ferals, given that they’ve lost everything that defines
them as human—something Steve never much likes to think about,
given his carrier status—but it’s somewhat another to make vampires
into an object like that, even if the vampires don’t treat the
tourists a whole lot better. Then again, how often has he really
gotten to talk to a vampire? His neighbours are the Johnstons, a
pair of cheerful and utterly-normal zombies, and he’s served plenty
of vampires, fae and zombies at the bookstore, but they don’t
really hang around with breathers. Steve, at least when he’s home
from university, spends his weekends fishing and zombie hunting
with