I am losing consciousness. The room became blobs, the usually hypoxic kind, instead of zombie vision, when I fell on the floor. When my face touched the carpet, I was not sure if I was still holding Eve's hand.
Instead, I noticed the physical sensation I was most concerned about with death: the tugging of the stomach. This happens every time I die. There will be a tug on my belly, like a rope tied to my waist, passing through my belly button.
I focused on the growing sense of separation, fascinated by it, and calmed down. The ceiling above my head keeps going in and out, but there is no whirlpool, no black hole of death, no...
Eve crawled onto my dying body, and I had to accept that there must be something wrong with this substitute, and I was in big trouble.
Her hair fell down, horrible. Her shirt was unbuttoned, and the white sè** of her bra appeared from both sides. At least her skirt is back where it should be.
But she put her weight on my chest, reached under the bed, between the mattress and the box spring, and took out a large kitchen knife—the kind Allie used to cut zucchini.
You must be joking, I think. Followed by, God, I want you to wear underwear.
She pressed me to the floor with her knees, as if I could go anywhere even if I tried. I can hardly open my eyes, even though I desperately want to see what she is going to do.
When the knife pierced my throat for the first time, my eyes closed and I tried my best to open them. They panicked when they saw her crying. For a while, her hands relaxed, as if she wouldn't do it. A low voice spoke somewhere out of sight, in a tone used to give commands or threats. "If you don't do this, we will kill her."
Her determination was back.
"I'm sorry," she said, and then broke the skin with a burnt slice. "I must do this."
Before I was really scared of what happened, or even considering that if my head was chopped off, I couldn't be resurrected.
Then I couldn't feel anything.
I am in a quiet and clean place. Because it has a strong preservative and lemon flavor, it is very clean. Warm hands touched me, adjusted me, and shaped my body into a pile of soft pillows. Someone keeps calling my name.
Brinkley stood at the door, in sharp contrast with the interior of the simple room: a bed, a lamp, a curtain, for my burning eyes. I woke up in the funeral home and waited for Brinkley to pick me up. Why did it feel different
"I'm cold," I told Brinkley, and I felt warm hands on me again, even though he was still at the door and I was fucking. "I hurt everywhere"
"Come with me," he said. It's like we are in a cemetery as old as Nashville. He was forced to squeeze the angle of his body with the tight part of the head stone. As we approached, these ancient monuments tilted toward each other.
"I worry about what he will do to you, once he realizes what you are"
"Who?" I asked. I scanned the tombstone and cemetery. We are alone, and it feels strange to see so many still spaces. There will always be people wearing black long-knee coats, wrapping flowers in cellophane or paper towels. Now there are only us, the tombstones and the trees, their skinny branches spreading over us, protecting us. The scenery here is too quiet, too quiet.
The hollowed out tree bends easily in the wind, and everything is cold. Da Da Da Da Da Da Dangdang. I put my hand in my pocket. Have I worn this jacket before? Where did this sudden heavy cloth come from? The wind in my hair moves like warm hands.
Brinkley trembled, as if made of water. "Do you remember him?"
"Who?" I asked. I watched in horror as his face began to melt.
He is no longer Brinkley. actually not. "Know your enemy. Know yourself."
"Who are you?" I asked and took a step back, but I didn't really move. I can not do it.
"I am your friend," he said, as if it were true. But he is not Brinkley. Brinkley didn't have green eyes, and he didn't have such a full mouth.
My body still refuses to move. "Where is Brinkley?"
Fanfan, can you hear me? Don't give up on us, damn it.
Hearing my name, I turned around, but didn't see anyone, only the little black bird from before perched on a tombstone in the distance.
"Listen to me." Brinkley's voice returned in the cemetery. When I looked back, I didn't see him. He disappeared, leaving me alone with the bird in the cold cemetery, his voice blowing in the wind.
"Listen, listen," said the bird. Open and close its mouth like a rough puppet. "listen."
One bird became three. Three became nine, until there were many birds in the cemetery. They screamed, flying from the narrow branches, the cold stones, and from the calm angel's wings, drowning the echo of Brinkley's voice. A large group of blisters like black blisters popped up on the wilting lawn of the cemetery.
"Brinkley," I called out in horror. "Brinkley, where are you?"
The birds fused together to form a black wall, and they were taller than the tallest oak tree. It cast a shadow on the cemetery in the city of Nashville behind me, washing away the last rays of sunlight. The same goes for skyscrapers, their eyes are sparkling glass, looking from a distance, until the shadow of Yin covers their window glass, and the glass seems to be filled with smoke.
For a moment, I saw a face in the black mass. It's like a half-memory face, with soft edges.
I stumbled away from the dark bird wall, but my ankle was caught in something. I tripped. The heavy feeling in my heart became stronger and stronger, and I jumped sharply, afraid of falling.
"Brinkley!" I screamed, hoping he would come to rescue me. My throat vibrated for the first time, adding weight to his name. It burns like hell. Suddenly there was too much light, and the reverberating dada dada I heard turned into my crying heartbeat by a small cuff attached to the cuff on my finger through the monitor. "Brinkley?"
"Hush, hush, it's okay," Allie squeezed my hand. "We are in the hospital."
Eve stuck a knife in my chest, yes, the whole world was shifting and gradually became the focus, but Brinkley still lingered. His smell, like cinnamon and aftershave, binds me in my dreams. "she cried."
I tried to sit up. Ellie repositioned the pillows to support me. She could speak a mile in a minute, but I was still lost in the cemetery—trying to remember the face that I saw bubbling in the dark. "Wait. What?"
"Ryan hid the camera in the lamp," she repeated. "This is also a good thing, because if he hadn't, we wouldn't have seen her trying to chop off your head."
She briefly explained that the hotel's wireless signal passes through his laptop, these cameras are like those he installs at work, etc.
"How long have I been in a coma?"
"Two days," she said. "There is no record of beheading in the database, but you have not been completely beheaded. You have lost too much blood."
I always lose too much blood, so my AB+ blood type comes in handy.
The replacement agent launches an online database where we can log in and enter the type and duration of death we experienced and the recovery time taken. As new entries continue to emerge, we can check the entire database at once, so that we can ensure the accuracy of the estimates.
If Eve's replacement is normal, the choking usually takes 4 hours. Since the undead usually cannot survive, beheading or brain damage of any kind is not listed.
"Let me see." I took the small mirror Ally gave me. I took the gauze down and looked down. My skin is purple, bulging through the black stitches on my throat. The blood remained and coagulated between the black ropes.
"Damn, I'm like Frankenstein's monster," I pouted.
She made a half-hearted gesture to my chest. "It will not leave scars like your autopsy."
"Why did she chop off my head? Who would chop off someone else's head?" I asked. In my mind, what is this growing emptiness? Shock
"Maybe she will plead guilty," Allie said. "Ryan knocked her out with one punch. She was detained."
I was really surprised. "He hit a girl?"
"He said he believed in equality," she replied in a cold voice. Obviously, they will not be friends in their united hall missions or in their efforts to save me.
I tried not to imagine myself bleeding to death, but failed. I imagined what my body would look like in Ryan’s arms, and there were blood stains everywhere on the hotel’s nǎi oil sè carpet. In my imagination, my head floated up and down in this place, almost unconnected, because Ryan passed through the gleaming glass door to the sunny street.
"What about that guy?" I asked.
"He escaped. Until Ryan replayed the tape, we saw him rush into the bathroom as soon as he heard us at the door. We ran past him and he slipped out."
"I want to watch that videotape," I said.
"Too bad, Jǐngcha took it away," she said, wiping my sweaty bangs from my forehead. "I'm very happy that Ryan installed a camera and stole Eve's key card."
"What, why?" I took a sip of the water she provided.
A violent knock on the door shook the door, and a man walked in quickly and purposefully. He was wearing a suit and combed his hair on a good boy's forehead. His face was shaved. I suspect that he is no more than forty years older than he looks. Perhaps because I look like a Girl Scout most of the time, I am always skeptical of a person's "true age". (To be continued) (End of this chapter)