Five’s eyes flickered over to Eddie.
“The finale, eh?” The hunched gangly form of the preteen pressed himself up into an exhausted stand. “And look at you, you can’t even swat that partially unmade fly away from your eye. For you, it would be a massacre. You were a fighting corpse, now you’re barely a walking one.”
Eddie’s stateless gaze was motionless. His vapid pupils, unable to ascend to a partial blink.
“Didn’t think I’d have to do this to my own partner, given the circumstances. I thought you’d you know, at least start trying to kill me and keep at it before it would come to this.” Five rolled his eyes at the unfolding of absurd events.
Five tilted his head and placed the heft of the sword in his hand. He blinked. The hilt oddly heavy with the act he intended to perform on this.
They had teamed up, talked poetry, then a deadly chase had ensued. “Those were the days.” The youth said, reminiscing with a gentle shake of his head. A smile filled with pure disbelief.
“Without this comp, we wouldn’t have met at all though. So I guess I’m thankful for that.” He sighed. “But I don’t have any coffee to pour out for ya, buddy.”
Five patted the undead’s skeletal back. “It’s been a wild ride. Guess I’ll give you a Yeats goodbye. Yeah, seems fitting enough.
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost.”
Grief of the fallen transcended into the air. The youth readied himself for a new, fresh wound. The kind he was used to, that his memory had filled with. More and more death. Gushes of goodbye.
“What’re ye doing so close to my neck, boy?” Eddie’s jaw hung-half closed while the rattle of his voice stirred the silence of nature surrounding them.
“AH!” Seriously, wtf? The undead guy comes back to life? Is this a plot twist? Five had been really ready to end it. One for his own survival, he didn’t want to have to fight the Unmade corpse, and also, allies shouldn’t suffer if death is inevitable.
Fabric tore. A cold press of the corpse’s hand grasped Five’s and tossed the blade away. However, the innate violence in Eddie seemed momentarily dormant. Instead, he looked at Five with curiosity as though he were trying to recollect what had happened. And exactly what had led a young boy to narrowly slicing his throat while he wasn’t looking.
Kudos were in order. The villain Eddie nodded to himself. To the hellborne child.
“Look at me having anxiety and I haven’t even had enough caffeine to get an overload.” Five mused to himself, de-escalating the rattling shock with some of his quippy humor.
“Anxiety? What is that and why do you have it?” Eddie mused.
As usual, the joke fell stale on his teammate. But it didn’t matter, right? They were back in business.
“I’m just surprised, that’s all.”
“Surprised because you had intended to lose my neck, eh?” Eddie didn’t even seem angry. As though he were a wiser version of himself, stating a universal truth.
Five toyed with his own stiff collar with a clawed index finger. “Uh…”
“I’d be surprised too if I saw someone resurrect from the pinnacle of his toneless madness.” Eddie mused.
“You uh, know about that, huh?” Five asked.
Eddie offered a curt nod, “How could I not? It’s my life.”
“The other ones-”
“Yes, yes, we’ve kind of got a curse on us. Y’see. Some of us are cursed to remember, and some of us are cursed to forget.” Eddie explained as though they were all 'united by the cause'. Of course, that wasn’t the only curse.
“Seems like there’s a course to chart, still.” Veteran Eddie sighed, as though he often woke up from the brink of nothingness into predicaments such as these. “I think you’ve stuck around me this long out of simple curiosity. I’m welcome to keeping that alliance, despite the unsightly choice I caught you in the middle of. Thing is, I know what you must think of me. I’m okay with that. I know what I’ve done. But, I’m the end of life Eddie, tired of the same story living out the same way. All this evil, it doesn’t end. It just keeps going until the good dies too.”
Five blinked. For once, wordless. He disagreed but something stopped him from saying that he didn’t. Perhaps, a deep rooted knowing of an old man trapped in the wrong timed body.
“Was that you who spoke some Yeats to me? Or was I imaginin’ that?”
“No no, that was me.” Five nodded bashfully.
“Ah, I knew you were a good lad. My favorite. That’s how I’d want to go, put to rest by poetic words. That’s why, in a former life so to speak, I was a musician.” Eddie spoke of his transformations as though they were reincarnation. But really, they were certain untold loops of himself.
“Why’s he your favorite?”
A sentiment twinkled in Eddie's blackened eyes. “He writes as though he’s seen it all, too."
There was a long pause before good ol' Eddie spoke again. “But, seems like there’s still work to be done, no? That’s why you were ready to slit my throat? I appreciate the mercy, but you can let them ravage me. I wouldn’t know the difference.”
He brandished the flesh peeling off his toneless sinew of mush. Five offered a confused forced smile unsure which words to choose to speak to the creep. “Heh…Heh…”
“Don’t worry about it laddie. I am who I am and I’m not sorry about it.” The monster slithered, “You ask me if I’m sorry for deliberately killing those pitiful souls. I got news for ya, I’m not. I’m the version of myself that remembers how the other Eddie felt living in the moment. He’d justified the useless carnage in his mind far before he took the final action. I know there was evil and malice in his heart. I know there is still some in me. Murder for me is not play as it is for my former self. Instead, it is a means to an end.”
Five considered these words. Before he could speak, Eddie continued on, “You’re a hitman, ain’tcha? Five is like, your spy name or something?”
Five nodded and opened his mouth, Eddie interjected again, old man speak was strong in both of them, “And before you have to explain, you said you’re not five years old, but rather, your name is Five. And you’re not a child yet you’re trapped in the form of one. Curious. Still figuring it all out, aren’t you? Hate to tell ya but it doesn’t get much easier.”
“Erm, yeah. I have a question for you, what the Hell are you?” This version of Eddie seemed the most sentient and the most likely to answer his question.
Eddie slapped his slightly protruding femur bone and laughed in a rattly way that sounded like a deadly snake’s tail and a gavel slamming repeatedly into a judge’s altar. “HAHAhahaha! Boy you crack me up! I can see why the other Eddie wanted to eat you!”
Five blinked to himself. Well that didn’t exactly sit well with him. He found his eye twitching as the only question he actually wanted answered had not garnered a response.
“How bout while we venture to our destination, I tell you something you already know. There is no winning in death game, only death, that’s why it’s always winning.” An eerie grin of amusement stretched the skin of his face.
“Let’s go dieeeee, shall we?” Eddie perhaps was the only one to rejoice at the sentiment. For, it was the monster’s very own currency.