Sweetheart,
Please, please don't be so depressed — We'll be married soon, and then these lonesome nights will be over forever — and until we are, I am loving, loving every tiny minute of the day and night — Maybe you won't understand this, but sometimes when I miss you most, it's hardest to write — and you always know when I make myself — Just the ache of it all — and I can't tell you. If we were together, you'd feel how strong it is — you're so sweet when you're melancholy. I love your sad tenderness — when I've hurt you — That's one of the reasons I could never be sorry for our quarrels — and they bothered you so — Those dear, dear little fusses, when I always tried so hard to make you kiss and forget —
Salve regina. Hail, holy mother.
Mello drops his shotgun and it clatters to the ground. He lifts his hands, an angel made of bones and skin, his wire arms lined by crusty scars scabbed over with dry blood. Starving Mello, King Mello, God Mello, center-of-the-universe-at-all-times Mello. His lips are twisted down in a scowl, his tired blue eyes bagged and staring at everyone, at everything, at nothing at all. I'm looking at him over my shoulder, our backs turned against each other, shoulder blades brushing each other (his angel wings, my scrawny skeletons). Mello glances at me, the whites of his eyes running red, bloodshot. His blonde hair is longer now, most of it spilling out from the bun at the top of his head, framing his face, falling across the back of his neck, behind his ear. He blinks, slowly, at me. His eyelashes are clumped with mascara and his eyelids are caked with cheap drugstore eye shadow. And he smiles, yellow chipped teeth circled by smeared worn off lipstick. Someone shakes their gun a little, says something, and we both turn back around. Mello: confident; me: giving up.
Mater Misericordiae. Mother of mercy.
We're standing in the middle of some gravel road in the middle of some washed up bleached town. People surround us, stagnant Catholics and meek hillbillies, all of them dying for some death, all of them stiff cardboard cutouts from America in the 1950s: the women with their concealed black eyes and curly hair, the girls with their juvenile braids and pearl knees, the boys with their thin lips and evil faces, the men with their stubble cheeks and iron hands. They're all holding rocks. Some of them are dressed in dry starch clothes, ironed flat, swimming in pastel patterns with their legs rung in itchy snow tights, or with silk handkerchiefs tucked into their breast pockets, or, perhaps, somewhere, with both, because there is always an anomaly. And then there are others garbed in torn overalls and torn cotton, with dust caked into the wrinkles of their faces and dirt stuck underneath their broken fingernails. They stand with the others who are obviously better off and higher above them, all so they can reassure themselves that their lives could be worse, that they are not at the very bottom of the world's totem pole, food chain, whatever.
Vita Dulcedo. Our life, our sweetness.
The sun beats down on us like God's fist, bleaching us all and erasing our colors. Mello and I are standing in the circle the town members have made, absolutely cornered. Our hands are up in surrender, our wings exposed. Mello, dressed in his extravagant, white, beautiful, designer stolen gown, which erupts in a mess of fabric at his thighs, barely has any feathers left. White and golden and flaking and dying, they pile at his feet, and the ones left surviving, or left behind, cling to his hollow withering bones. And, simply, standing in my ratty, patched jacket from Germany, sweating buckets, greasy hair and greasy skin, I have always been a skeleton, if an angel at all.
Et spes nostra salve. And our hope, hail.
There are kids, tossing dry dusty rocks into the air and catching them in their thin, dry dusty palms. They snort and spit giant glowing wads of saliva at the ground, at each other, at my feet and Mello's feet. Mello probably isn't too happy about that. It may get on his dress.
Some of these people in the crowd aren't holding rocks, they are holding guns, big fat hunting guns they likely hang on their walls fully loaded. Guns they compare and rate and show off. Guns their kids predictably steal to shoot birds and each other with. I can picture it all now. Sharp laughs, low laughs, cigar smoke, red lipstick on wine glasses, skinned knees, whispering hands, mature jests and vulgarity and then behind it, or ahead of it, infantile curse words.
Ad te clamamus. To thee do we cry.
I can hear a click as someone takes the safety off a rifle.
Mello says loudly, "This is a bit unnecessary, don't you think?"
He is dying. He is dying, he is dying, he is dying. Pumped full of estrogen, alcohol running through his veins, dreams of great, stock-standard success and unstable stability slamming across his brain, Mello is dying and I haven't done a damn thing about it. He is flaking at the edges, wearing at the seams, crumbling underneath his skin like a once great civilization, soon to be nothing but buried evidence and an invisible history. It's natural that I would carry on his legacy and his memory as his only companion, but it's much more complicated than that. I don't know if I want to. I don't know if I'll even be alive to make the decision. Because I'm dying too. Live fast, die young, badda bing.
I look up at the sky. There isn't a fucking cloud in sight. The blue is so bright it burns my eyes. The color of Mello's irises.
Exsules filii Hevae. Exiled sons of Eve.
Mello says to the townspeople behind me as I look at the sky, "Look, we'll leave, just let us go."
Ad te suspiramus. To thee do we sigh.
Mello adds, growing irritated, "I dropped the gun. What do you want?"
I close my eyes.
Gementes et flentes in hac lacrimarum valle. Moaning and weeping in this valley of tears.
Seeing neon orange, someone in the crowd answers Mello, with a raspy voice, "You need to atone for your sins!"
Making out shapes behind my eyelids, a younger person calls out "You're going to Hell! You're the devil's advocates!"
The sun melts my skin. A little girl says, "You deserve to die!"
Eia, ergo, advocate nostra. Ah then, our Advocate.
"You've got to be kidding me," Mello responds. His wings bump into mine. "Are you serious?"
Illos tuos misericordes oculos ad nos converte. Those merciful eyes of thine turn towards us.
"Shut up," orders a gruff voice.
Et Iesum, benedictum fructum ventris tui. And Jesus, the blessed fruit of thy womb.
"You idiot!" Mello screams behind me. I don't open my eyes. "You idiot-bastard!"
He's thirteen again, at Whammy's, yelling at some kid who probably did nothing wrong. He's nine again, sitting at my bedside, glaring and sneering and tossing insults at me so I may get better. "You're so stupid, new kid," he tells me. "You're stupid and dumb and your American accent is annoying." He tears my Gameboy out of my hand and snorts at the screen. "You're video games are stupid too!" He throws the handheld back at me. It hits me square in the chest. Mello narrows his sharp blue eyes. "Get better so we can climb trees. Near is a boring arse and I hate everyone else too." He doesn't hate me though. He doesn't hate me.
Nobis post hoc exsilium ostende. After this exile show unto us.
And then a whip of sound, something hurtling through the air, and pain blossoms on my abdomen. I grit my teeth, grit my eyes shut even tighter. Behind me, Mello shrieks and stumbles into my back.
O clemens. O clement.
"You're all fucking crazy!" Mello screams. I can hear his throat tear apart. "You're all so fucking goddamn crazy, you sons of bitches!" His feathers fall to the ground in waves. Buildings tumble and crash. Mushroom clouds of dust explode.
My father. "Don't look, Matt," he shouts, barreling down the California highway in our van. "Don't look!" He throws his entire head so he can glance at me, at my wide open eyes which stare at his wide open eyes. "Goddamn it! Don't fucking look!" Gun shots. Sirens. Tears. Don't look. Don't look. Don't fucking look, Matt.
O pia. O holy.
Hands held in surrender. I lower them. Someone in the crowd shouts out. Panting at my back, Mello says, "Mail." Warning. Or scared. Unable to form a sentence. Again. "Mail, Mail, Mail…"
Eyes closed, I start unbuttoning my jean jacket from Germany. I let my fingers skim all of the patches, the swastikas, the bands, the logos. I undo the last button and peel the coat off my arms. Left standing only in a plain t-shirt, I throw the amnosity somewhere in front of me with moderate force. The crowd cheers. Hooray.
Mello. "Mail. What are you doing?"
That's not my name. Do I have a name? I don't have a name.
Mello's skeleton hand scrabbles for my normal one. Skeleton hands attached to a dying angel body. Normal hands attached to a skeleton body. Am I nothing?
I can hear guns being moved, plural, as Mello forces our fingers to entwine. "Mail." Waver, waver, break, die.
I imagine a little girl with a blue headband lift her hand seconds before another rock hurtles into me in the exact spot Mello threw my Gameboy years ago.
Mello breathes heavily as another rock hits him. He's forced backawrds into me. Our contrasting wings crash together and I can't tell whose is whose anymore, or what even made them different. A mess of feathers, a mess of bones, a mess of everything.
O dulcis. O sweet.
"Do you think we'll die?" Mello asks me. We don't look at each other (don't look, don't look).
"I don't know," I tell him, "but you're going to kill me, anyways." The old shebang for old time's sake. Completely innappropriate for this conversation. I don't make any sense. Nothing makes any sense.
Mello starts crying, finally at his breaking point, or perhaps that passed long ago. I've always been broken.
A gun fires.
Mello slams on top of me and I catch myself with a foot, forced to carry his weight. The crowd cheers. Hooray.
O clemens; O pia; O dulcis Virgo Marie.
O clement; O holy; O sweet Virgin Mary.