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Eddy is my friend. I like him, because he let me eat his brain.
Correction: Eddy was my friend.
I still like him.
I met Eddy in a graveyard bathed in moonlight. Moon was about lunatic, so they said. Moon was about Clair de lune, so Eddy said. He liked Clair de lune. He liked music. I like music, too. But mostly classical.
Under the moonlight he found me. He was digging something, I believe. His spade shoveled mud on my face away, and his scream woke me up. So the first being I saw in this world was his face.
He made a funny face, hehe.
Later, he told me that he was laughing. I felt like he was crying. But he insisted that he was laughing, as he was happy to see me. I trusted him.
Lying in my grave, I looked at him. He looked at me. It seemed that someone should break the ice. So I said, “Hi, bro.”
He smiled.
He really did. And he kneeled to hug me. My bones cracked. I didn’t feel pain; I just heard them cracking.
“Sorry, Brett,” he said, “I broke your pinky toe.”
OK, so I guessed that my name’s Brett. I looked down. My right pinky toe was about one meter from my half-rotten foot. I didn’t mind not being bodily intact. After all, you don’t need all your toes to play the violin. Thus, I said, “that’s fine. I have nine left.”
He nudged my remaining toes with his toes. I felt warm.
He said, “Our toes love each other.”
He was right. Because he was very smart. I knew that from the first sight.
“Can I eat your brain?” I asked.
“What?”
I told him that (I thought) he was very smart, and I’d like to eat some smart brains. He replied, “You sure? I don’t think my brain is included in a healthy diet… but maybe you don’t need to be healthy anyway.”
“Cool. So can I eat your brain?”
“Not yet.”
“Fine.”
He apologized with his uncertain eyes, “Sorry. Are you mad?”
“No,” I told him, “I don’t think so.”
He brought me into his car. Apparently he was so excited that he forgot to bring his spade with him. I was excited, too. As I was freed from the soundless darkness.
He asked me if I knew who he was. I told him that I knew. I just couldn’t recall.
Knowing and recalling were different. There were many things that I didn’t know, like why I was here and why I didn’t know why I was here. Yet something hit differently: I knew his name. Moreover, I knew that I knew his name. I just couldn’t recall.
He said, “It’s fine, Brett. I’m Eddy.”
“I know, Eddy,” I told him.
Eddy smiled. He didn’t think that I’m dumb. He never did.
So I went with him.
-
We were always on the road.
I lay in the back seat while Eddy was refueling his car. That way, no one else would see me. If anyone saw me, Eddy would tell them, "That’s my friend. He's tired, so please leave him alone."
He wasn't lying.
I was his friend and I was tired. My limbs were sore. I was always hungry, because I couldn’t eat my brains. Humans got hurt in an adventure and cured afterward. Zombies couldn't. My body was decomposing little by little, with no way of recovery.
One day, Eddy and I were chilling under a big tree. The tree was tall, tranquil, and lonesome, around whom all you could hear was the waterfall and wind. I pinched off a withered leaf from the tree only to leave the twig a pale, open wound. A wound that would last before I could see it healed.
I told Eddy that I thought this tree and I were of the same kind.
Eddy said, "I'm sorry, Brett."
"It's okay, Eddy," I said. Because I knew he would say the same to me.
We kept switching hotels. Sometimes we slept in shabby, windowless motels; sometimes in chain hotels that had cockroaches underneath the carpet. Eddy hid away in scream when he saw cockroaches. I asked him, "Is it really that scary?"
He yelled from the bathroom, "Yea!"
Other times we slept in the car. Eddy would adjust my seat so I could lie down and stretch my limbs. I was careful not to let my broken bones fall out every time I lay down. Being a zombie is tiring.
Eddy opened the roof window, pointed at the sky, and said to me, "Look, Brett! The stars! And the moon."
"I'm hungry." I said, "Can I eat your brain?"
"Not yet. Sorry, mate. "
"OK."
Eddy turned on the radio. A beautiful piece began to fly out from the speakers. A piece, not a song.
I asked Eddy, "What's that piece again?"
"Dvorak's From the New World."
Tilting my head, I saw a swirling maelstrom of stars that seemed to stretch on for eternity, joined by a tumultuous blend of invisible notes rising from rolling hills of the countryside beneath us. The glittering storm of star light fell onto us, shrouding us in its eye-wall. There we lay, safe and sound.
Being a zombie wasn't that tiring, after all.
-
Eddy gave me some gifts. I remember two of them.
The first one was a pig brain. It was a fleshy gray, bumpy pile of jelly, blood dripping everywhere. I took a bite while Eddy was looking at me, eyes wide open. I took another bite, almost hurting my finger.
Eddy asked, "Any good?"
I said, "Legit."
He laughed so hard. I said "legit" again, just to make him happy. He laughed even harder. The real people got happy so easily.
Eddy was concerned that I would choke myself, so we stopped by the Chinatown where he bought the pig brain until I finished eating. He asked me, "Do you still want to eat my brain?"
I said, "Yes."
He said, "Okay, but not yet. I have something else for you."
Then he handed me a cup of milk tea.
He taught me to say, "黑糖珍奶，半糖去冰。(Black sugar bubble tea, half sugar, no ice.) "
I repeated, "黑糖珍奶，半糖去冰。"
Eddy exclaimed, "You said it better than I did!"
I sucked those balls. They were supposed to be sweet, but I couldn't taste the sweetness. Still, just sucking them made me feel good. I kept doing so.
Eddy rested his head on his arms over the steering wheel, looking at me, fine hairs behind his ears gilded by the sun. He smiled, "You told me that life was too short to give a damn to every shit in this fucking world. Should listen to some music. Look at the sun. And, have some kisses."
If my head wouldn't fall off so easily, I'd have nodded.
-
Eddy gave me a violin, his second gift. He handed the case, "Sorry bro. Couldn't get your old violin back."
I opened the case and as I gazed upon the violin inside, I started to recall. I recalled the feeling of loss and yearning. Hesitance and resolution. Joy and sorrow. I recalled something that is most universal and the noblest, whose name I knew but could not recall. I was transported to a realm beyond the present, rendered in a state as fragile as a spider silk trembling as it clung to the support of an iron-cast sculpture in the tearing autumn wind. God could make me blind, mute, and crippled, only if I could redeem what I felt but lost.
I put the violin on my shoulder. Eddy looked at me.
I moved the bow.
I ceased. My muscle and my mind recalled nothing but death, as cold as marble.
I felt sad, as if someone had robbed me of decades of hard work. I told Eddy, “I can't recall how to play the violin.”
That night, Eddy couldn't sleep. He never slept well. Usually, he'd hold me and fall asleep. When he was asleep, I hesitated whether to eat his brain or not. Even after eating pig brains, I was still hungry.
Tonight I didn't have a chance to hesitate, as Eddy couldn't fall asleep.
He was unhappy.
I said, "Legit."
He laughed in the way when the first time he saw me.
"You're crying," I said.
“I'm laughing,” he said, “because I'm happy to hear your voice, Brett.”
-
Eddy and I had been together for a long time, so long that it felt like we had been together since the world was a fetus. I was used to Eddy's messy and warm car, just like how he was messy and warm. We were always on the road, heading from one end of the universe to the other.
When we had time, Eddy taught me how to play the violin, starting from the scales. I learned slowly. Sometimes the strings cut into my fingers, leaving them deformed. The more I learned, the faster I forgot, so I had to keep trying harder.
Eddy always said, "It sounds beautiful, Brett."
One day, Eddy asked me if I wanted to go to a concert, and I said yes. I was thrilled and the pig brain that I was eating fell from my hands.
Eddy hung back, but he eventually bought us tickets. The name on the ticket was Michael Ling, and I asked him who Michael Ling was. It turned out that it was a pseudonym. Eddy told me to keep a low profile inside the concert hall—not to walk around, not to look around, and not to clap between movements.
We went to see Hilary Hahn's Bach Suite. She looked very amiable. While listening to her performance, Eddy sniffed so heavily that he sobbed. I did too, even though I didn't need to breathe.
After the concert, we walked out and saw a zombie at the opera house entrance. People were giving him tips. I asked Eddy, "He's not a real zombie, right?"
"No," Eddy replied, "real zombies wouldn't show off like that. This world's dangerous for zombies."
We walked around for a bit. We walked down a bustling street, and the bright sun made my head ache. It had been a while since I had eaten any human brains, so I was hungry. Every slow step took me much effort, but Eddy's always with me. He said, "Wow, walking down the memory lane."
"Have we been here before?"
-
I always woke up earlier than Eddy. But I was getting more and more hungry, weaker, and sleepier. One day, when I opened my eyes, he was already awake. He sat on the bed, with a gun pointed at his temple, looking at me.
I said, "Good morning, bro."
He said, "Good morning."
He put down the gun as if nothing had happened.
Then he poked my face and said, "It's snowing."
I turned to look outside the window. It was already midnight. I had waken up, but the world was sleeping in white. The snowflakes were like fragments of oil paint shaken into the atmosphere, covering life and death in fine pieces.
"I suddenly realized," Eddy said, "that many people have seen you asleep. But only I have seen you waking up. Like now."
"How long have I been asleep?"
“A long time. You slept very painfully. Only I could hear you with your eyes and mouth closed, nonetheless saying to me: 'Don't leave me in silence.' Only me. Nobody else heard it. Why?”
“Then you woke me up.”
Eddy nodded. He rubbed his face with the back of his hand, "Secretly."
I said, "Thank you."
Eddy lowered his head towards me. Neither of us spoke. However, soon enough, I began to feel the hunger. I said, "Can I eat your brain out of your mouth?"
He thought about it for a moment, "Not now."
"Alright then. You can keep kissing me," I said.
Eddy touched my stomach, "You're hungry."
"It seems so. I suppose I can't keep eating pig brains forever," I quipped.
"Touch me, Brett. So that when you're about to eat me, you'll know where to start."
I reached out to touch him, feeling the presence of a living person. Living eyes, like a puppy’s. Living lips, coated in glittering moist. Living veins. Living chest and living ribs. Living navel, like a tiny, multi-folded teacup, with an umbilical cord not attached to anything in the world. Living head. Living confusion. Living fear. Living guilt.
Eddy’s nothing like me. I was already dead.
Abruptly, a loud, hard knocking echoed through the room. Eddy jumped up and went to block the door.
I tried to get up, but I couldn't move. I looked up to the ceiling. Was my dead soul up there laughing at me and him?
-
I learned a lot from Eddy.
I learned that my fingers were like the delicate bones of a bird, the mole at the corner of my eye like a period etched in lead, and my music like pure freedom. Even if I forgot how to play the violin, no one could stop us from loving each other in music. I also learned that when we jumped from the second floor, he would use his whole body to protect me, so that my broken bones wouldn't fall out.
The only thing I didn't learn was spelling. I’m never good at spelling.
So I always forgot what kind of illness threw me in a PSV.
Eddy set me free secretly. Because it was done secretly, he couldn't attend my funeral.
That's all in the past now.
Now, when I see a dirty snowflake, I think of our car wheels crunching over pristine winter snow. When I see a bedsheet, I think of all the love made by all the people in the world. When I see a sliver of moonlight, I thought of Debussy's Clair de Lune, Bach's suites, and all the music since the Big Bang (only classical music). I also think of Eddy. I think Debussy is just as good as Bach because Eddy liked Clair de Lune.
Eddy said, "Bow your head, it's best if we keep quiet."
His blood was black in the moonlight.
I whispered, "My head's gonna fall off, man."
Eddy said, "Then you lower your head carefully. If it falls off, I'll catch it for you."
I carefully ducked my head. My head was more like a living person's head than I thought it would. It didn't fall off.
The police still hadn't left. Their boots crunched on the snow. Each time they stepped, the world in front of me spin 45 degrees.
Eddy said, "I think I can hear your heartbeat."
I replied, "My heart doesn’t beat."
Eddy said, "It does. It’s a G flat."
We hid in the corner for a long time. Eddy tested my breathing, then pulled back. I don't know what he felt. I wanted to ask, but I was too tired and cold. I wanted to sleep.
Eddy murmured, "Don't sleep, Brett."
Distant sirens wailed.
"I'll try," I said.
Eddy asked, "Do you want to eat my brain?"
I looked over at Eddy. He gasped, speaking gently, "I've woken you up. Let me have a rest now, Brett."
He could be easily made happy and easily made sad. Now he was happy and sad at the same time. Living people were always like that. It's always like this.
I thought zombies wouldn't bleed. But clear blood dripped from my eyes.
"Run when they turn around." Eddy said, "Run quietly and fast. Run to the car, drive, and leave. Can you drive? Just step on the gas and don't think nothing."
I said, "Okay."
He reached out his frozen hand to hand me the gun. Then he burrowed into my arms. His furry head was in front of my face. He said, "Be gentle, bro. I'm afraid it's going to hurt."
I opened my mouth. Eddy's brain was messy and warm and wrinkled because he was very smart. I knew this from the first time we met. He tasted salty.
I asked him, "What were you digging the other night?"
Eddy smiled with the half remaining face. He said, "I wasn't looking for anything. I was digging myself a grave, right next to yours."
-
I regained my strength. I wiped the blood from the corner of my mouth and rushed to Eddy's car. The police yelled behind me like a messiah chorus. I stepped on the gas as hard as I could. Bullets pierced the window glass. I didn't care. I pedaled as hard as I could, with my four toes left. I didn't know how long I'd live. All I knew was that I must live on.
Eddy is my friend. I love him because he let me eat his brain.