Free Eeeee Eee Eeee by Tao Lin Page B

islands and beat Elijah Wood and the other famous people with heavy branches. They cried when they murdered human beings, and it was terrible.
    One dolphin had a battle axe and killed Wong Kar-Wai.
    Wong Kar-Wai was easier because he wore sunglasses and couldn’t really see the terror.
    Sometimes dolphins knew other dolphins—cousins, uncles—that had died, and they said, “It is sad they died but there is nothing to do except be nice to anyone still alive.” But they themselves had not been nice. They had killed Elijah Wood, Kate Braverman, and Philip Roth—people like that. They had made promises and forgotten. One dolphin had become friends with a man with Down syndrome and the man had written the dolphin a letter and the dolphin had not responded. Another dolphin had made promises to meet a person—had promised, and promised again, a third time—and had not kept them, and it had hurt the person.
    And so they said, “I need to be nicer from now on,” and went home.
    At home they decorated their Christmas trees and sat on the floor.
    “I have no one to be nice to,” they thought.
    They went to an acquaintance’s home—to try to be friendly and compassionate to someone—butwere not invited inside, and went back home, and thought about how as a young dolphin they had thought that the Gulf War happened in the Gulf of Mexico.

 
    “Do you want to see an independent movie?” Jan said in the car. She reached over and patted Ellen, her daughter, on the head. They were driving somewhere. Ellen had been sitting there, on the sofa, drinking water; her mom had said something about Vitamin D, or something; and now they were going someplace. It was Spring Break for Ellen. So far she had drank water on the sofa while thinking about how to destroy the local Starbucks; ate a bagof carrot sticks while walking around the neighborhood, feeling afraid of people; and, the day before that, slept sixteen hours. A few more days and she would be sitting there again, in Advanced Placement American History. Her teacher, who was also the football coach, would make fun of Sacco and Vanzetti. People would take notes.
Sacco and Vanzetti are pansies
.
    Ellen didn’t respond so Jan patted her again; and kept patting and then patted Ellen’s forehead a little too.
    “You’re going to crash!” Ellen said. She didn’t trust her mom. But she shouldn’t be afraid of dying, she knew. It would happen, of course. “It’s okay if you crash. I’m just saying. You might.”
    “You like independent movies because they are real. They have meaning. Those movies where things keep changing. Mutants,” Jan said carefully. “People don’t change like that. They don’t fly and shoot lasers from their eyes. That’s not real.”
    “You don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s about how controlled by money things are, not how real.”
    “We’ll adopt a lot of dogs for free,” Jan said. “Is that what you mean?”
    Ellen was confused a little. “Maybe. But people are always like, ‘Plants are alive too, and you eat those, hypocrite.’ But what’s worse? Murdering a thing with nerves and a nervous system or murdering a thing that only might have those? I mean, people are stupid.”
    “Tomorrow we’ll adopt one dog,” Jan said. “We’ll do it at night, and we’ll ride bikes so we don’t waste gas. Do you like that? Adopting dogs at night, doesn’t that sound fun? What will we name them? I said one. We’ll get two.”
    “I’m serious,” Ellen said.
    “What’s your favorite animal?” Jan said.
    “I don’t know,” Ellen said without thinking.
    “Is it a horseshoe crab?”
    “I don’t know,” Ellen said.
    There was a store outside, passing by, where they sold hunting gear. It had a canoeglued on its front. Who needed to murder a deer then sit in a tree and float down a river? “I’m going to kill everyone,” Ellen said. She was against violence, she knew.
    Jan smiled at her daughter. She moved her hand to pat