Tao Lin - Eeeee Eee Eeee

Elijah screams.

The dolphin drags Elijah’s corpse into a cave and sits on it.

The cave is very quiet and dark.

The dolphin feels bad.

It feels very calm and a little bad.

A bear drags in Sean Penn’s corpse.

The dolphin pushes Elijah’s corpse into a hole and there is a loud coconut sound.

The bear pauses then quickly drags Sean Penn’s corpse out of the cave.

Sean Penn’s skull makes little coconut sounds against the cave floor.

At home Andrew showers and eats a banana. He takes his dogs for a walk. The dogs are tiny. Living with two dogs in an enormous house in a gated community. Andrew’s neighbors think he is strange. ‘Eccentric.’ Andrew is afraid of his neighbors. The gate has a secret pass code. Sara has a secret pass code. She should. Andrew would stand there for years trying combinations. He wouldn’t keep track or develop a strategy but just continue trying different combinations and then Kafka would rise from the grave and write a novel about him. He feeds his dogs. There is more dog shit in the piano room. Leave it. Sell the house. Suitcase full of cash. He goes to the back porch. He thinks about jumping into the pool, swimming twenty laps at lightning-speed. Drowning. Putt-putt, he thinks. He goes in the living room. He lies on the sofa. Not waving but drowning. No future. The future is now. Meaningless. Wave of the future. Everything is clichéd and melodramatic. He should eat. He used to think things like, This organic soymilk will make me healthy and that’ll make my brain work better and that’ll improve my writing . Also things like, The less I eat and the less money I spend on publicly owned companies the less pain and suffering will exist in the world . Now he thinks things like, It is impossible to be happy . Why would anyone think that? Things like, Godsford Park is the worst movie ever . Gosford? Godsford?

“Godsford,” Andrew says out loud. “Gosford.”

“What is happening right now is a depressing waste of time,” he says.

He finds his dogs and follows them. “Dogs,” he says. Chihuahuas. They have names. Waste of time? No, the dogs are good. They’re old. Andrew feels sorry for them. Pretend they are Sara. “Sara,” he says. He touches the dogs. They run away. His house is enormous. He’ll never find his dogs. He’ll find them and crush them. Mass grave. The Earth is just a massive grave. Andrew needs to stop thinking about the things he always thinks about. He needs to sell his house. He needs to clean the dog shit in the piano room. He goes to the piano room with toilet paper. Play a song for Sara. She will sense it. He badly plays fantasie-impromptu. Sounds clichéd and melodramatic. Too loud. Turn it off. He stops playing. Thank you, he thinks. Clean the dog shit later. Never clean the dog shit. Sell the house. Don’t look there, it’s just a piano. Don’t step there. Don’t step on my abstract art . Sara, The tree in the front yard doubles as a garage . Suitcase full of cash. High-fives in the side yard. Ellen, sitting in darkness in the living room. Sara Tealsden. Why is Andrew obsessed with Sara today? Is it like this every day? He can’t remember. Don’t think about it. Death. Think about death. The binary nature of the universe. Andrew’s mom in Germany, staring at a ceiling thinking about death. The mother squirrel flying by, confused. Sara, I feel like flying squirrels need to stop screwing around and get day jobs . You win, you lose. The man with the face. Three wishes. Sara. Andrew will scream, sexily. Killing rampage in a tree fort. Andrew is about to murder someone. He goes upstairs into his room, puts on a depressing CD, lies on the floor on his back; pulls his blanket off his bed, covers himself on the floor. Sara.

There is a very loud noise downstairs.

Something is coming up the stairs.

Andrew stands and walks to his bed.

Sits on it.

A bear walks into Andrew’s room.

The bear stares at Andrew.

While staring at Andrew the bear claws the wall.

The bear sees the thermostat and turns it down.

Andrew lies on his bed and falls asleep.

When he wakes it’s colder.

The bear is standing going, “Hrr, hrr.”

“Polar bear,” Andrew says. “Is that what you want?”

The bear stares at Andrew.

Still staring at Andrew goes to Andrew’s desk and picks up a CD case.

Looks at the CD case, looks at Andrew, puts the CD case back.

“Put it back,” Andrew says. “Oh, okay.”

“I just put it back,” the bear says.

“I know.”

“I need to get something,” the bear says.

The bear goes downstairs and comes back with a sledgehammer.

The bear smashes a hole in the floor with the sledgehammer.

The bear looks at Andrew.

The bear feigns jumping into the hole

The bear hops and disappears in the air.

Andrew goes to his window.

The bear is running across the neighbor’s front yard.

The bear jumps over a row of bushes and falls on the grass.

Smashes the bushes with the sledgehammer.

Changes into a truck and drives over the bushes.

Changes back into a bear.

Smashes a tree with the sledgehammer and screams.

Disappears.

Reappears next to Andrew and hugs Andrew.

“I’m sad,” the bear says. “Give me advice.”

“I don’t know. Go to Japan,” Andrew says.

“It’s morning in Japan.”

“Where in Japan?”

“A house,” Andrew says.

“A house. What city?”

“A house by a river,” Andrew says

“Okay,” the bear says, and disappears.

Andrew goes to his bed.

He covers himself with the blanket.

Puts his face in the pillow.

Spring break. She came to Florida. She drew genitals on Jhumpa Lahiri’s face. Duane Reade. She was like, Nothing . The guy was like, What? They sat on separate branches. He should have moved closer. He was too depressed. He is always too depressed. Should’ve been happier and laughing. He forgot to be happy. He was too bored to be happy. Your Popsicle looks disorientated . Sara, laughing. Should have hopped nimbly to her branch, kissed her. Should have held her suddenly and danced. They should’ve stayed in Florida. They should have danced and fell from the tree and they both should have been taken to a hospital. Together in a hospital kissing. Why isn’t that happening right now?

“Batman’s car looks like a tank,” Andrew said to Mark, in a Japanese restaurant, in Manhattan, where neither of them lived. “Is he making fun of himself? It’s like he’s just screwing around.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t see this with you,” Mark said. They were going to see the new Batman movie. Mark liked Batman very much but liked Spiderman more. “I’ll see it alone.”

“I want to see it,” Andrew said. “I think if I really wanted I could enjoy it sincerely. I mean, I could ‘get lost in the story,’ or whatever. If I chose to. Should I?”

“It’s not ‘getting lost in the story,’ ” Mark said. “It’s just — it’s Batman . You are a snob.”

“No I’m not. I liked Braveheart , starring Mel Gibson.” Andrew grinned. Shit-eating grin, he thought. Mark did not respond. He was a graduate student, Andrew knew, from Singapore, where in the army one night they screened Braveheart in an auditorium, then lectured on patriotism, citing scenes from Braveheart . “Is this The Beatles?” Andrew said. They were playing The Beatles, or something, in the Japanese restaurant. “It sounds like it might be The Beatles.”

“It is. I like The Beatles.”

Andrew looked around without processing anything except that he was currently ‘looking around.’ He drank his water — all of it — then set it down and looked at it. Singapore, he knew, was its own capital. Like Vatican City. Only Catholics lived in Vatican City. To get in you had to get the Pope to stamp your passport. He stamped one hour each day, except Sunday, walking around or sitting on a bench somewhere. You had to find him. Sometimes he climbed a tree to hide. Sara, Andrew thought. None of this was true, he thought, and felt momentarily enlightened — detached from meaning, language, and understanding. “The Beatles …” he said. “Are they — do they believe in God?”