Intertwined – (Although both dead they have never felt more alive until now)

The streets of Bristol glistened, it was nearly midnight. Witching hour, thought Kieren to himself, suppressing an ironic chuckle. Everybody knew witches didn't exist. Only zombies. He looked wistfully at the houses surrounding him. The terraces of Totterdown looked like chalk thrown on a black canvas. He shouldn't linger. Rotters weren't welcome here. There were dangers. As if summoned by his thoughts two ominous figures emerged from the shadow shrouded part of Thunderbolt Steps. This, thought Kieren, was why tempting boys like him invested in baggy jackets. He flipped up his hoody and stuffed his hands in his pockets. He emitted anonymity. Melting into the darkness. He thought it would be okay, but people like these were born from out of the darkness and knew where to look.

With inhuman speed he felt an unnaturally cold hand grab him by the back of his hoody and drag him into a headlock before a sharp blow was delivered to his stomach, winding him sufficiently to silence him. A figure stepped coolly into his now tear-blurred line of vision.

"hey hot stuff,"

it was a woman. Kieren was forced to look at her by the thick arm of the man behind him. She was, he supposed, pretty...perhaps beautiful...but, he also supposed, now was not the time to be musing over the girlish wiles of his attacker. She had a tumble of "just been f*cked" brown curls and a fitted summer dress which was strikingly incongruous in a dark Bristolian alleyway.

"Daisy!" there came a growling voice from his left ear which was the voice of his closest assailant.

"Daisy, I don't know what this little sh*t thinks he is. There's no blood or... anything. And he doesn't smell like a dog."

Whatever he was, Kieren could only faintly remember what breathing had felt like before the cumbersome presence of Ivan's arm around his neck.

"Aaaggh" he wheezed in true incomprehensible zombie fashion.

"Well, Ivan," Daisy breathed, in a lilting Scottish accent. "We'll just have to find out what he is..." She was close enough to kiss him. Instead she only pushed back a stray strand of his dishevelled copper hair.

She blinked prettily and Kieren blanched as the whites of her eyes where swallowed up by and absolute and irreproachable absence of light, quite different from his own. Glistening teeth emerged from her playful smile and the vampire, in her predatory glory, was preparing to strike when a dark shape like careened into her like a bullet, driving her into the rain cobbles. For a beat nothing moved. Then Ivan's arm was wrenched from around Kieren's neck. All he could do was crouch to catch his breath. Looking up he saw an unknown figure standing in in front of him.

"Good evening Ivan. Daisy."

"We were just playing, let us have some fun"

"Play. Elsewhere."

"We're hungry"

"It wont be his blood spilt if you don't leave"

The stranger's stance was superficially casual. But Kieren could see the long fingers which emerged from black fingerless gloves where curling into tight fists. Wordlessly Ivan and Daisy went on their way. And as quickly as he had been placed in mortal peril, normality was restored. Except, that was, for the stranger.

"Come with me." It was a command. Kieren did not want to rile this man too. He noticed a fluidity in the gruff voice which was unmistakeably an Irish accent. Kieren liked it.

"Shit. Was that a... Vampire?"

"I'm sure there's a joke in here somewhere, 'a vampire, a zombie and their insatiable hunger walk into a bar'..."

"I think I've heard that one and it gets messy."

Kieren could not believe he was attempting to humour his unknown saviour.

With that, the man brandished his keys and stepped into the peach coloured house on the corner at which they had arrived.

They stepped into the lamp-lit living room. Kieren finally saw him properly. He was beautiful.

There was an effortlessness to his seraphic beauty. Dark hair that fell in curls, complimenting the planes of his sharply structured face, which was covered in a smattering of dark stubble. His eyes were a deep chocolate and they twinkled out from under thick brows. Kieren knew that even in moments of despair of solemnity those eyes would be a source of awe for him. A large, gloved hand shot out.

"John Mitchell. But primarily Mitchell."

"Kieren Walker. But primarily PDS sufferer."

"You're lucky Ivan and Daisy have been living in a hole and didn't know that."

"why?"

"you're interesting."

"is interesting dangerous?"

"if you're with Ivan and Daisy then being is dangerous."

"oh." he looked up through his long bronze eyelashes, "you don't mind? About the PDS..."

Mitchell laughed bitterly. "you make me feel like a fussy eater, like an amateur."

It took Kieren a minute.

He stuttered "crimes which a PDS sufferer commits whilst in their untreated state..."

"I don't care about your past. We've all dabbled in things we shouldn't... for some people it's speed, for others its human brains. Or blood."

Mitchell stared down at him for an intense few seconds.

"tea?"

"I don't drink"

"me neither."

"oh" ...on closer inspection Kieren noticed a thin trickle of blood smudged over one of Mitchell's exquisite eyebrows.

"Mitchell you're bleeding." Uncharacteristically boldly he grabbed a tissue from a seemingly spurious box and dabbed at the wound.

"Ivan just clipped me in the scuffle, it's nothing."

Mitchell caught Kieren's hand where it lingered on the side of his face, stared right at him, through the contact lenses. He found a clean corner of tissue paper, licked it and drew a slow, pale line down Kieren's own face, taking with him a streak of correction cream.

Kieren acted on the sort of impulse that you can only gain from rising from the dead and, all at once, in a flurry of nerves and fluttering ginger eyelashes, Kissed Mitchell fleetingly on the lips.

Mitchell was taken by surprise. He had taken the liberty of staring, a little too long, into the eyes of his beautiful new guest. The boy, Kieren, really was spectacular. He had fine, delicate features an mesmeric eyes. His demeanour was unassuming and even vulnerable and at that moment Mitchell wanted nothing more than to take him in his arms and convince him of his own magnificence. Then, when Kieren leaned in swiftly, the light in his pale eyes flaring, Mitchell too gave himself over fully to desire. In the beginning it was hesitant. Mitchell gently pulled back and then smiled gently as Kieren hung his head, thinking he had been too forward.

"you're fantastic"

Kieren only stared at him, wide eyed

"Kieren, take them off. I want to see you."

he took them off and became more immaculate than ever. Without the contact lenses his eyes took on a moonstone hue, gleaming.

Mitchell leant in again, drawing Kieren into him. Like music rising in tempo their pace quickened and their embrace tightened. Things progressed onto the faded blue sofa and as Kieren lay back he groaned with insatiable need as Mitchell braced himself on top of him. Kieren seemed so fragile. They were as close as ever. The excruciating bloodlust did not plague him. Zombies had no blood. Where mitchell's love raged within him like an animal, Kieran tempered his violent adoration with halting, hesitant passion. Where Mitchell was Thunder and lightning and carried with him the force of the tempest, Kieren lay like a moonbeam, a careful, beautiful lover, a necessity.

When they discarded humanity they left behind their destructive human passions, short lived and fickle. Flesh met with flesh. Although neither could claim to have a soul, it was achingly, breathtakingly clear that whatever it was that they had was symptomatic of two souls...hopelessly intertwined.