Freak Frat

By Nicki Greenwood

It’s hard getting a life when you’re undead.

Freshman Year Checklist:

•Find the bit-and-run girl who turned me into a vampire
•Join supernatural beings support group
•Call Dad
•Cram for midterms
•Find out who’s trying to kill me

Joe Dietrich has a lot on his plate: college classes, a lonely divorced dad, and a weirdo gamer roommate. Oh, yeah, and that vampire thing. If only he didn’t have a supernatural hit squad after him...or a frenemy who’d rather take his head off than teach him to be a Supernat. If Joe can survive all that, final exams ought to be a piece of cake.

Good thing he hasn’t tried asking that Grim Reaper girl out on a date.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nicki Greenwood
• Release date: Oct 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781736251904

Nicki Greenwood

Nicki Greenwood graduated SUNY Morrisville with a degree in Natural Resources, which of course has nothing to do with writing novels. She has also worked in a bakery, an insurance agency, a flower shop, and a doctor's office, which have nothing to do with writing, either. She did spend an awesome two years as an assistant editor for a publisher, and now does freelance editing on the side. Nicki still holds down a day job, which manages to get her out of the house once in a while. She's been writing since 2010 and loving it.Nicki lives in upstate New York with her husband, son, and assorted pets. If you can't find her at her computer, you can always try the local Renaissance Faire.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events or incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, organizations, events or locales is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2020 Nicki Greenwood

Published in the United States of America by

North Star Press, LLC

Liverpool, New York

Cover design by Nicki Greenwood

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used, reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or information retrieval system, without written prior permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For information regarding permissions, contact the author at [e-mail].

First ebook edition: October 2021

ISBNs:

978-1-7362519-0-4 (ebook)

978-1-7362519-1-1 (hardcover)

978-1-7362519-2-8 (paperback)

Summary: When freshman college student Joe Dietrich is bitten by a vampire and left to fend for himself, he must learn to survive classes, supernatural beings, and a host of new enemies out to destroy him.

To the misfits, the mavericks,

the square pegs and strange birds.

Welcome to the Freak Frat.

We’ve saved you a seat.

1. NO PAST, SERIOUS PROLOGUE

I FIRST MET Death at a gas station on Main Street.

The place was getting robbed. Some punk had hit up the counter jockey for a measly three Benjamins, and I bumped into him on his way out the door. The punk must have taken it as an attempt to stop him or something. Next thing I know, I’m flat on my back in the greasy lot, with a giant gunshot hole bleeding out my gut and three copies of Ben on the ground beside me. The shooter took off like all Hell was after him.

Nice. All that for a late-night pizza and wings craving. I remember wondering, while I was lying there bleeding to death, how many sausage supremes you could buy with three hundred bucks. I was also pretty sure I wouldn’t be making my World History One class Monday morning.

I should tell you, impending death isn’t that light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel thing, either. It’s an oh-damn-what-just-hit-me-I-hurt-and-this-really-sucks thing. Living forever? Just about as scary, in case you’re curious.

Oh, yeah. My name’s Joe Dietrich. Johannes, really, but I hate it. No one ever says it right. I should probably also tell you I’m a vampire.

The girl who bit me showed up almost as soon as I faceplanted on the pavement. I didn’t even know who she was, but holy crap, she was hot, even though I was about to die. I remember pale skin, long, blond hair, some kind of copper pendant on a long chain, and lips any guy with a pulse would die for. (Vampires have pulses, too, by the way—a fact which regularly pisses Death off. No pulse means you’re dead, gone, and irretrievable, and you have to do what Death wants you to do. Pulse means alive, even in the vampire sense, so you’re not stuck following Death’s say-so. A real picnic, that Death.)

When the blond girl bit me, it didn’t hurt. At least not as much as the hole in my spleen. The pain of being shot went away about a minute later. I tried to ask who she was and what the hell she was doing, but...well, a little tip: as a human, being bitten by a vampire pretty much paralyzes you for a few minutes, assuming the vampire doesn’t just kill you. If they don’t kill you, and they screw it all up, you’re looking at a few major adjustments to your daily routine. Like, to a nightly routine.

The girl leaned down in my face and took a sniff like I was my dad’s lasagna. Then she shot up with a little yelp and said, Oh, Lord in heaven. They’re going to kill me.

Hottest voice I ever heard in my life. Went nice with the smoking body. I tried getting up, bloody shirt and all, to get a name, a number, an anything—but by the time I made it to my feet, she disappeared. She left, just like that. Would’ve been nice of her to stick around to explain that I might want to re-register for night classes.

Then I passed out.

I woke up on the sidewalk next to Death.

Death didn’t seem too thrilled to be cheated out of getting me. She’s a chick, by the way. She spent the first minute glaring at me with her creepy gray eyes and her creepy black clothes and her creepy black hair. Who the hell are you? I asked.

Sunny. I must have given her a weird look, because she added, Shut up.

Okay, I tried again. "Then what was with the blond girl and the fangs and the ‘Lord in heaven’...and I just got shot, and I’m sitting here where it happened, breathing, talking to— Who are you?"

Let’s go, sweetcheeks, she said, standing up. She offered me a hand.

I shrugged it off before she even touched me and stood up by myself.

My shirt had no blood on it. My shirt wasn’t even my shirt. It was one of those cheesy small-town shirts every gas station sells to let people know you were lucky enough to visit there. Like people would volunteer to visit Luke’s Valley, New York (population: 1,012 when college is out). I wouldn’t be here, either, except on-campus living at a community college is way cheaper than UCLA, which is where everybody with a desire for a real life would rather be.

Anyway, going here, home is like half an hour away. Laundry runs on weekends, free meals when I stop in there or at the Grindstone. Dad’s cooking is better than anything they have on campus. He’s a chef, and even though I’m an only kid, he pretty much cooks enough for the U.S. Army when I’m home.

There were no cop cars, no fire trucks, no ambulances, and no bloody puddles on the gas station pavement. All right, I’m out of here, I said. This is screwed-up.

Sunny’s hand clamped onto my elbow. I turned around to slug her—forget all my dad’s never-hit-a-girl speeches—but her hand was ice-cold. Like four-month stretch in the subarctic, igloos and snowstorms, ice-cold. I think we should take a walk, she said.

I don’t think so.

Humor me. She pushed me ahead of her down the street in the opposite direction of campus. The look on her face made me wonder whether she even had a sense of humor.

First, tell me what’s going on, I said, jerking my elbow out of her hand.

"You Rec-Decs all ask the same questions. I’ve so got to start automating this part," she muttered.

Whatever she said sounded like wreck-deck, and it didn’t sound good. I stared at her, trying to figure out at which point my life had detoured into theater of the absurd.

She caught me looking and glowered. "Recently Deceased. Welcome to the rest of your non-life. I’d have fast-tracked you to the end stage on account of your clean record, but someone decided to make you part of the Pointy Teeth Club. Her tone dropped an octave or two, and I wasn’t sure I was supposed to hear as she added, If I find that stupid Serf and she isn’t already vaporized, I’m going to spend the rest of her undeadness making her wish I could kill her."

I spread my hands, the way you do when you’re trying to stop an unhinged person from totally snapping. Okay. Nice meeting you—I think—but I’m over this. I started to walk back toward campus.

Sunny jerked me back by my arm. Oh, no, you’re not. Your vampy little girlfriend took off without explaining the pointers to you, and now I have to do her dirty work. She stared at me so hard I thought she’d poke holes in my face with her eyes. "Why did she bite you?"

I don’t know who you are, or who she is, or what she did, I said, but I have a schedule to memorize, and a slob roommate to kick out of my bed, and a few tons of books to figure out how to carry without a front-end loader. So, I’m grateful for not being dead, thank you very, very much. I’m going now. I turned to walk away.

"You are dead. Well, not quite dead, she said behind me. Which is the problem."

I swiveled back around. What drugs are you on, seriously?

For a minute, I thought I was the one hallucinating. Sunny didn’t change, exactly...but something about the air around her got bitter cold and musty and really creepy. I’m Death.

She totally sounded like she said it with the capital D. I took a healthy step backward.

She kept talking. You are, or were, on my list for the night until Blond and Fangy snacked on you. She stomped her foot. Ugh. I hate vampires!

‘Cause they can’t die, I said flatly.

"Oh, you can die...but I don’t get you. Vampires get shipped the other way without a review," she said, then pointed downward with a smirk.

I couldn’t resist. Just for getting bitten?

Hey, I don’t make the rules. You can thank your nippy friend for cutting me out of the process.

I looked around. Are there cameras on me or something?

Sunny’s eyes narrowed, and she stalked closer. The musty smell got stronger. Listen. I have a lot of work to do, and this is the last thing I want added on to my night.

Sucks that I’m putting you out. What do you do, exactly?

She sighed. Her freezing hand came down on my shoulder and pushed. I landed hard on a sidewalk bench behind me. I am the end-of-life retrieval and review liaison for Recently Deceased Persons under Article Forty-Two, Section Five of the Overpopulation Control Act, she said.

The huh?

You think you people invented recycling? She gave the sky a desperate look. "This is why I need assistants. She plopped onto the bench beside me, and I quickly slid to the opposite end. Okay, here’s the short version. People die. I get them. I review whether they’ve been good little boys and girls or not, and ship them to Heaven—She pointed up—or Hell—She pointed down—based on the outcome of their reviews. If you’re good, you go to Heaven, and you get the option of being recycled into a new body and a new life. If you’ve been naughty, that’s it. Goodbye, reincarnation, hello, flaming pit of doom. She glared at me some more. Heaven’s pretty much endless. Hell is the broom closet in the office of the afterlife. It’s getting overcrowded, and Beelzebub is not too happy about it, because it makes more work for him. Which puts pressure on me, because now, I’ve got to tell him about you."

Why am I going to Hell if I have a clean record?

I thought we covered that, sweetcheeks. You’re a vampire. You might have guessed, Beely’s not fond of vampires. She looked me up and down, and I could tell by the raised eyebrows and squinty look that I wasn’t her idea of a creature of the night.

I swiped a hand across my gas station shirt, checking for bullet holes. I got it now: I was dreaming. Well, if I was dreaming, I could pretty much say or do anything I wanted, right? The thought crossed my mind—briefly—of hitting on her, just to see where I got. For a total nutball, she was cute. All right, I said finally. Let’s just assume for a second I’m very drunk, and that anything you’re saying makes the remotest shred of sense. Why would you waste time talking to me when where I’m going is a foregone conclusion?

She shrugged and bobbed her head to the side, looking for the first time like any college girl. A super-creepy emo college girl, but still. Maybe I feel a little bad about not getting there sooner and processing your review before Vampy showed up.

You were late? And now I’m doomed to Hell?

Have you seen the line at the coffee shop on a weekend during the college year?

Oh. So that freezy mocha whatever must really have been worth my soul, I muttered.

Don’t hate the frozen mocha. The musty death smell went away, and she stood. Okay, look. Since this is my fault, I’ll make a little time in my schedule to help you.

Gee, thanks.

Hey, I have a lot of work. I do overtime every night.

People die all day long. How do you only work at night?

She gave me a scathing look. When she spoke, her voice oozed sarcasm, which I began to realize was her only mode. I can make time last as long as I want to get everybody reviewed each night, she said. No one but me realizes the difference. I’m like the Santa Claus of death.

Uh-huh, I said.

She stuck a hand in her pocket then came out with a slightly crumpled business card. From another pocket, she withdrew a pen then scribbled something on the card. "Here. This place can help you. Get there, like, now, because you have about half an hour before you get really hungry, and you don’t want to make your first food one of your fellow college students. I’ll catch up with you."

I squinted at the card under the dim streetlight. The front said

SUNDERER

AKA Death, The Grim Reaper, Azrael, Pale Rider, GOCYTC

Deceased Persons Retrieval and Review

Corrective scare tactics for family and friends

provided upon request

555-KICKDIT

There was a Gothic skull and crossbones in the corner of the card. The back just had the address she had written: 463 Quentin Street, First Floor. Hey, wait, I said. What is this...place?

But Sunny was gone. And she was right. Suddenly, I was hungry enough to eat a raw steak.

2. HOW TO MAKE NEW FRIENDS FIENDS

THE BUILDING AT Quentin Street was about the saddest pile of bricks in Luke’s Valley, and unlikely to be used by any of the town’s residents ever. Plain windows with plain blinds. The stenciled street number was missing part of the 3. The only personality in the whole thing was a rusty steel door someone had painted with a now-fading yellow tree.

I pressed the button next to a peeling label. The words on the label, also faded, were stamped with S. Kinnan, Textiles Instructor – Knitting, Crochet, Embroidery. I double-checked my address. Yep. Death would be getting a wicked head slap if I saw her again.

May I help you? responded a squeaky female voice.

Um, yeah, I said.

Name and date of expiration, the disembodied squeak said.

Expiration?

J-Joe. Dietrich. I grimaced. Uh...an hour or two ago? And that’s as far as I got. Sunny hadn’t actually covered how to sum up I was bitten by a vampire, and now I’m going to Hell, and I haven’t even had my first day of college yet.

Come in, the voice said. A buzzer sounded, and I opened the door.

Inside, it looked like every doctor’s office I’d ever seen, but the smell of disinfectant almost knocked me back out the door. I coughed and held my arm over my nose.

The secretary looked like a reject from a telecommunications ad. Bad hair, too much makeup, and a smile that made me feel a little queasy instead of welcome. She pushed her glasses up her hook nose and gave me a bored stare. Her eyes were huge under those inch-thick specs. Zombies, she squeaked. If we didn’t spray the floors down every two hours, it’d be worse, trust me. Vampire? She poked through a stack of papers in trays on her desk, clipped a few to a board, then shoved the clipboard at me and went right back to clickety-clicking on her computer as if I had a clue what was going on.

I took the clipboard then sat in a plastic chair in the corner of the lobby. There was a stack of outdated magazines, a couple of sad-looking palm trees in pots, and a sign on the wall that said

NOTICE:

Appointment cancellations or tardiness in excess of fifteen minutes are subject to a ten-year subservience fee. The SBS is not responsible for your extenuating circumstances. Get here or get indentured. No exceptions.

I glanced down to the clipboard, hoping for some mention of what a subservience fee was, but all I found was a generic form titled Vampire Registry, asking for my name, date of death, and family records. Behind that were a questionnaire and a few pages that looked like an ink blot test. While I was looking over the first question (Have you eaten, or are you currently considering eating, a member of the human race? If yes, skip to question four.), someone came into the lobby. I decided I wasn’t quite hungry enough to eat a person yet and looked back up again.

Aaagh! I screamed and lurched back in my chair so fast, it smacked the wall.

Standing at the secretary’s desk was a werewolf, just like you see in the movies—a super-jacked man with fur all over, and a giant wolf head. He started growling at the secretary.

The secretary stared at him through her turbo specs and gave him the same bored look she’d given me. You’re twelve minutes late, Mister Winkleman. Shapeshifting and speech therapy, Room Six on the right. She shoved another clipboard at him. Sign if you can, pawprint if not.

The werewolf pressed his paw—hand—paw—into a tray of ink on the secretary’s desk, then applied it to the sheet on the clipboard. He wiped his inky paw—hand—paw—on his fur and went down the hall growling. I don’t want to know what he said.

Resigned, I started wading again through the questionnaire, not understanding half of the questions and not believing the other half (12. Did you, in your human incarnation, experience the following: A) The ability to attract and/or mesmerize others, regardless of gender or species B) A talent for appropriating objects or infiltrating places which might otherwise be denied to you C) The irresistible urge to kill anyone who opposed your superior D) The innate need to sit in a library? Check any or all that apply. I skipped that one.).

By the time I finished the questionnaire and stumbled through the ink blot test (most of them looked like the Statue of Liberty, whatever that meant), I really was starving, and my stomach felt like it might begin eating itself. Question one started looking debatable. I brought the form to the desk.

The secretary was standing up and grabbing a purse. I held out the clipboard. I’m done.

She cast an irritated look at the clock on the wall. It was thirteen minutes past the hour, which made me wonder how much time I’d have to get home and sleep before waking up at four A.M. to my roommate playing video games and swearing at his computer.

The secretary glared at me as if I’d made her late for a hot date. Fine, she huffed. She grabbed the clipboard. The papers slid off it and into a wastebasket by her desk. She flicked a hand at them. Whatever, I’ll get them in the morning. First door on the left. You’re lucky. There’s an orientation just starting.

I glared back. This. Was. Not. Luck.

She sighed and fixed me with that magnifying-glass look, already inching toward the exit. Anyway, sorry about your undeath, you seem like a nice kid. Without another word, she shot out the door.

I went where she’d directed, hoping with a growing sense of futility that they had either an explanation or a buffet. I even eyed the drywall and wondered what sort of roughage it might provide. I pushed open the door labeled One and walked in.

If you’ve ever seen the workshop of one of those guys that does the costumes for a creature feature, that’s pretty much what this looked like. Sitting in the chair closest to me was another werewolf. This one was white, and from what I could tell by what remained of its human features, female. Her tail stuck out through the hole in the back of the folding chair. It waved when she saw me.

Beside her sat two perfectly normal-looking guys. The next two seats held a pair of slender, wispy girls about my age. Both had dark, curly hair, satiny brown skin with a subtle metallic sheen, and—I blinked—wings. The next two chairs were empty. The last, separated from the circle by a few feet of buffer space, held what looked and smelled like a zombie. I started to cover my nose.

The zombie’s expression started to crumple. I swallowed back my gut.

Howard, remember your patience. We all need to relearn our etiquette, said a voice.

From the room’s corner stalked a guy who must have been on loan from Out-of-Your-League Fashion Design. I yanked my hand away from my nose. He was tall, pale, and dressed in stuff that would’ve taken me six months to buy. He held out a hand. Welcome to the group, Mister Dietrich. Or do you prefer Johannes? He said it perfectly, with the German accent, but I still cringed.

Joe, I said. I hesitated a second before shaking his hand, hopefully without a look of vapid envy on my face. This was the guy you spent your life wishing you were. Most people never got there. I was so far away from that, I was in the negatives.

I’m Seth Kinnan, the director of the Supernatural Beings Society, he said. Welcome. I’m sure you’re hungry. He gestured across the room. Help yourself to the snack bar, then have a seat. You missed the office tour, but we can do that later. We’re just starting introductions. Take your time, and we’ll get back around to you.

I lost most of what he said after snack. Whatever sat on the table in the corner smelled like ambrosia. I tried not to run to it.

A basket of foil drink pouches sat beside a bowl of sparkly