Spring rolls and egg foo yong

 “And then we spoke of kids on the coast
and different types of organic soup”

- Lou Reed – Wild Child

 

Susan opens her bag and pulls out two cigarettes and a lighter. She puts one of them in my mouth and lights it.

‘I was thinking we could get Chinese tonight,’ she says while she lights hers.

‘Not a bad idea,’ I reply, ‘Where?’

‘I don’t know. Do you have a favourite Chinese?’

‘Do you mean in Southampton or in general?’

‘In Southampton, obviously.’

‘Oh. No, not really.’

I wish she would ask me about my favourite Chinese in general. It is in Tampere, Finland. It is open twenty-four hours a day, but no matter what time I went there the same two men would be working there. Whatever you ordered from the menu, they never had it. You had to list every dish you wouldn’t mind eating until you came across one that they were willing to make. Sometimes this didn’t happen at all, and it would get to the point where they were forced to tell you they only had rice, peppers, bean sprouts and onions left. Once you’d ordered that, they gave you a pink plastic watering can. On my first visit I genuinely started to worry what it was that was expected of me, but it turned out to be a jug of water to drink with the food. All the furniture was covered in sturdy see-through plastic, and there was a sign on the wall saying that if you wanted to take any leftover food home you were free to put it in the plastic drinking cups.

I follow her into the house and wait while she walks through the kitchen and into the shed in the garden.

‘Come over here, I can’t carry it all by myself,’ she calls out.

‘Jesus Christ it’s bloody heavy,’ I say as I grab the other end of it. She’s wrapped it all in bin bags and tied them together with some string.

‘Ok wait,  I’ll put the car right near the shed and then we only have to carry it out of here and into the boot.’

We just about manage to get it into the car before I would’ve dropped it.

‘I’m going to bring a saw just in case,’ says Susan.

 

‘How long do you reckon it takes driving to the New Forest?’ I ask her while she’s looking through her bag for the car keys.

‘About thirty minutes?’

‘I guess we’ll be home by about 7 then? I’m just thinking about whether I should bring something to eat.’

‘Nah, it won’t take that long, we’ll get the Chinese on the way back.’

I open the window as we drive down Portswood Road, past the dodgy-looking chip shop next to the church.

 

‘Have you ever been to the open mic night in there?’ Susan asks as we drive past the Talking Heads.

‘No, I should really go.’

‘I once went to this other open mic night with this guy I knew, Tommy,’ she says,  ‘He wanted to become a blues musician, but he couldn’t really play solos on the guitar, only Ramones songs, so he bought a harmonica instead. There turned out to be a whole subculture of blues fanatics in Chichester, besides Tommy and one other teenage boy they were all men in their thirties and forties. One of them told me to get them some beer while they discussed which songs to play, because ‘playing the blues is men’s business’. Then a rumour spread that the local blues legend, a man called Little Boogie Boy might show up. This made Tommy so nervous he smoked all of the weed he brought in one go, but the joint burned too fast because he didn’t add enough tobacco and he burnt his lip on it, so it hurt when he had to play the harmonica. When Little Boogie Boy finally turned up it turned out he was this fat white guy, he looked a bit like Chevy Chase.’

‘How pathetic! I hate men who are into blues. Maybe even more than I hate men who are into classic rock, and think that women only pretend to like the same music as them because they want to fuck them,’ I say.

‘Yes, you got me, I spent lots of money buying expensive vinyl records and limited edition Led Zeppelin t-shirts just so I could shag a spotty creep with a hairline that starts at the back of his head.’

The smell from the boot seems to be getting stronger, I light a cigarette to try and neutralise it.

We drive into the area of the forest, and Susan wonders where to park the car.

‘The thing is,’ she says, ‘if we park in a car park no one will notice us. But then we have to carry it all the way there.’

‘I could barely carry it into your car. I think we’ll just have to risk it and drive into woods a little.’

We turn into a muddy path and drive on for a few more minutes until we’ve reached a dense part of the forest.

Susan opens the boot and takes out the two shovels, and the big saw.

‘Ok, I didn’t bring this up beforehand because I was afraid you might find it a little too much, but I think we should cut off his head first,’ she says.

I contemplate this for a second, pushing my sunglasses back into my hair, ‘Do you think that will make it harder if someone finds him?’

‘Yeah, I guess. Mostly I’ve just always wanted to see a severed head.’

‘Fair enough.’

We dig the hole first, the ground is moist and sticky so it is harder than I expected. The wooden handle of my shovel rubs into my skin, so I wrap my scarf around it.

‘I wish we had some ice cream,’ I sigh.

‘I know!’ says Susan, ‘We could drive by Sprinkles later?’

‘I think they might close early, it’s a bank holiday.’

‘I wish they delivered.’

I stop digging and lean on my shovel for a second, ‘I’m not sure if delivering ice cream would really work, wouldn’t it melt?’

‘They could just have a some sort of device and a freezer bit in the back to make the ice cream for you on the spot.’

‘That exists though. You just invented the ice cream van.’

‘Oh yeah...’ she says.

‘I think the hole is deep enough now?’

She nods. ‘Ok, time to get dirty.’

A strong odour of death escapes as she opens the boot, and I tie the scarf around my face. We pull out the body, and I watch as she puts on latex gloves and removes the bin bags. The dried up blood around the stab wounds in his chest looks brown and crusty, and there are a number of flies crawling around his eyes and mouth.

‘If you just put on some gloves and hold him steady, I’ll have a go at the sawing,’ she says as she grabs the saw.

It’s a simple hand saw and I’m not sure how easy it will be. The talcum powder in the gloves makes my skin crawl. I kneel and lean down on his chest to hold him steady.

I expected blood to flow when she starts sawing, but there is none. She cuts through the flesh easily, but the bone puts up more of a struggle. The saw slowly cutting through it makes an awful chirpy sound that makes me grind my teeth.

 

‘Do you already know what you’re going to order?’ she asks.

 ‘Definitely spring rolls. Ooh and maybe egg foo yong.’

‘With egg fried rice?’

‘Yes, obviously. You?’

‘Crispy duck pancakes. And something that involves chicken.’

‘I’m so hungry now.’

I didn’t realise it was that far along, but suddenly she pulls the head off entirely.

‘Haha!’ She holds it in the air triumphantly, a piece of flesh falls out and lands on my foot.

She waves it around a little.

‘It looks weird,’ I say, ‘ Like, his mouth is open a little. He looks surprised or confused.’

‘He probably is mate, he’s dead! Hahahaha!’

I watch as she puts the head aside on the bin bags, and gives the rest of the body a slight kick so it rolls into the grave we dug for it.

 ‘Ok so if, hypothetically, the zombie apocalypse happens anytime soon. Do you think he would come out without his head?’ I ask her.                                                                                                                                                                       

‘I don’t think so, I’ve never seen a zombie without a head. To be fair though, I don’t think a real zombie apocalypse would have zombies coming out of their graves, that’s not very realistic at all. It’d probably be some infectious disease. You know, like in 28 Days Later.’

I ponder this for a few seconds, while I throw some dirt into the hole, ‘What do you think would happen if the zombie apocalypse happened like, tomorrow?’

‘I guess everyone dies eventually? Then there will just be cockroaches. And Keith Richards.’

‘Yeah, I guess he’s been around forever.’

‘He survived taking more drugs than anyone in the world, he will survive the apocalypse.’

‘Yeah, I guess he must have done quite a bit of drugs in his days.’

‘He snorted his dad’s ashes.’

‘Oh you mean Keith Richards! I was thinking of Cliff Richard. It seemed strange that he’d have done drugs, but I figured he probably did in the sixties and everything.’

We’ve buried him quite sufficiently now. Susan is trying to flatten the bump of dirt a little, to make it look natural.

‘Ok,’ she says, ’If it’s someone really hot, like I don’t know, Ryan Gosling or Zooey Deschanel, would you still have sex with them if they were zombies?’

‘Hmm...’ An interesting question, for sure. ‘Zooey Deschanel, yes. I never really got into Gosling. Tom Hiddleston though, I would probably still do if he didn’t have a head.’

‘But then how could you tell it was him! It could be any relatively toned guy!’

‘No but if you knew it was him.’

‘How? He told you without a mouth?’

‘If there was some sort of proof that it was him. What about you then?’

‘You mean who would I have sex with if they didn’t have a head?’

‘Or if they were a zombie in general. You can pick two.’

‘I’m gonna have to go with Jennifer Lawrence and the girl who plays Santana in Glee. They would have to have heads though.’

‘Look, I’m not saying I would prefer it if Tom Hiddleston didn’t have a head. But you’ve got to take into account the narrative value of it.’

‘The what?’

‘You know, sexual encounters can have a narrative value. When you sleep with your new boyfriend, you do it because you’re in love. When you do it with a random hot stranger, you do it out of lust. But when you do it with, say, Jeremy Kyle? You do it for the narrative value. That is a story you can tell for the rest of your life. And Tom Hiddleston without a head definitely has a high narrative value.’

‘With this kind of reasoning, you might as well sleep with like... Boris Johnson.’

‘Imagine though! The narrative value of Boris Johnson is through the roof!’

‘I guess I would sleep with that guy who sang Gangnam Style for the narrative value.’

‘That’s an excellent example. Imagine in twenty years, you could tell someone ‘I once had sex with Psy,’ and they would be like ‘who the hell is that?’ and you could start singing Gangnam Style and everyone would be like ‘no way!’

‘Also, Miranda Hart.’

‘The guy from LMFAO with the cardboard box on his head.’

‘The guy from the Old Spice adverts.’

‘Bonnie Tyler.’

 

We drive off, the head in a bin bag on the backseat.

‘What are we going to do with it?’ I ask.

‘I’m not sure, I thought we could throw it in the sea somewhere, but now I think I might keep for a while first.’

‘Keep it? It smells awful!’

‘I mean in the freezer.’

‘What about your housemates, won’t they find it?’

‘I was thinking I could put it in an old bag of oven chips.’

‘Oh yeah, or maybe a bag of frozen spinach.’

‘If I lived on my own, I would just leave it in the garden and see what happens to it. Maybe take pictures to document to process.’

‘Then you could keep the skull once all of the flesh is gone.’

‘Oh my God! That is the best idea! I’m going to remove the flesh, keep the skull, and paint it purple. I will put it on a shelf, and everyone will think it is some kind of novelty item I bought at Urban Outfitters.’

‘I think if you boil it the skin comes off, I’ve seen it on CSI.’

‘Well there you go, I will boil it and have a pet skull. I think I’m going to call it Raymond.’

‘It’s interesting that the skull would have like, a separate identity once it’s only a skull.’

‘Yeah man, Raymond will be a big improvement. He won’t smell of after shave for starters, and he won’t be into panel shows with Jimmy Carr.’

‘He won’t wear fleece jumpers.’

‘He couldn’t if he wanted to, because he doesn’t have a body.’

‘He won’t listen to U2 and insist that you just don’t get them.’

‘He won’t listen to anything because he doesn’t have any ears.’

‘He won’t tell you to stop listening to Rihanna and get into some ‘proper music’.

‘He won’t tell me anything, because he doesn’t have a fucking mouth.’

 

When we come home, Susan’s housemates are all in the kitchen so we leave the head in the car for now, on the floor under the passenger seat.

We order two portions of egg fried rice, twelve vegetarian spring rolls, plain egg foo yong, crispy duck pancakes, and broccoli chicken.