BANG BANG
a memoir of nicholas d. wolfwood
characters belonging to Nashiro Nightow.
Bang Bang. That was the sound of his childhood. He had been arrested at age seven for the murder of his "guardian", the monstrous wasted lifeform of a man who would crack him with the broken bottle of tar colored wine until the glass cut in, and then took the bone casket of his hips and plunged inside; a beast; who had been wracked with hunger from the moment that the dark-haired woman whose hips had breathed life back to him perished in a bed of illness, and he was alone with her son, not his son, the mirror image of her, in that cradle birthbed of human sin. By the time seven-year-old Nicholas D. Wolfwood had mustered the courage enough to blow that bastard's brains against the wall, he was being hauled off to the sherriff's station and then enrolled in some miscellaneous orphanage on the East side of December and left there to rot.
He remembered the first time he stepped foot in that place. All the starving destitute faces that followed him like ghosts through every hall. He was tough and cynical already. He ground his teeth down to the nerves in his sleep and pulled the trigger again and again in his mind. He felt nothing but the tight coiling stomach knots of anger then. And all these lonely bone orphans who flittered from room to room in their stained little clothes clutching stained little dolls, who cried in their sleep as he lied through his teeth and dreamed murders. Those kids looked up to him.
Then Chapel the Evergreen came flesh-hunting in December one very fateful day and picked up little Nicky, his newest protege, along the way. Later he would never be able to recall what exactly had drawn him to that place that day. What strange instinctual urge had lead to being so drawn in by the small black-haired child with those cold, steely eyes, those tiny fingers perfect for gunning at only age eight, so drawn to him in fact that he ended up teaching that harmless "kid" everything about wasting heads he knew; molding him into the crooked mercenary he was when he died.
But the thing about Nicholas D. Wolfwood was that he wasn't all muscle and steel and cold-hearted-murderer notions. He did it all for the children. Or at least that's what he told himself. And sure he was far from a good man, and the Lord only knew how hard God himself must have laughed when he signed the papers officially stating his priesthood. But he had heart somewhere in there. Buried. And it was never more apparent than when he met Vash the Stampede: the infamous outlaw who was more like a child trapped in some fucked up angel gunman's body instead. The one who was supposed to play the Jesus to his Judas if he played his cards right.
And of course he knew that by helping Knives he was aiding in the eventual destruction of humanity. He could also read between the lines just well enough to see that Knives didn't want his baby brother dead at all. In fact, he was pretty sure of what Knives was hoping for in "Eden", and it didn't matter to him one way or the other because Knives was going to get what he wanted- how could he not when he was what and who he was?- and he figured the plant didn't get laid enough anyway. But then everything changed. And at the same time, nothing did. He just heard the other side of the story was all. And putting the pieces together, he realized that maybe it was time to repent; and he was going to do it through Vash the Stampede. All at once the man who breathed life back to him in so many ways, Vash was an intoxicating person and the more time he spent with him the more the theory started building that he couldn't hate this man, couldn't sacrifice him to the bed of the beast, couldn't stop him or hurt him or even lie to him anymore because it was true, he realized.
He really would do anything for Vash. Die even. And at the same time that Vash was the reason for the sunrise and the sunset and the reason he kept living even in the desert wasteland of a world he fucking hated, the sovereign of that dry hell a God which he had to admit even as a man of the cloth had one mindblowingly warped sense of humour, he was also the most tragic character that must have ever walked the face of that whole godforsaken planet. The scarred marred sacrificial being who chased dreams of red geranium across the endless dunes, searching for love and peace and, he imagined, never finding it.
Even those nights when the fantasies pooled in their bed and their bodies were a temple, a garden, a shrine. Sprouting flowers from the bone and ascending from the ash of ruin- the broken city of July and the broken cities of their hearts- into the very heart of the darkness, to create a sort of perfect light from their joined bodies. For just a moment. Like a touch. Like a breath. Tangible. Real.
Of course it couldn't last. It was all he thought about as he tore through the night on the blazing chrome demon of a motorcycle he called Angelina. Angel. Angels. Life. He thought about his life. Was it worth it? Sacrificing everything. Or sacrificing nothing. Could there ever be life without sacrifices? Like Midvalley's sacrifice of his body to Legato and the sacrifice of his music to the death music of Millions Knives just to stay alive. Like the insurance girls' sacrifices of their jobs and even their lives to just keep following the man in the red trenchcoat to the ends of the earth forever. Vash's sacrifice of his entire existence for that woman who had made her mark on him so many years ago and had never once faded from him since: Vash's sole driving vision, Rem. His own sacrifices.
The sacrifice of his body. He was aging faster and faster prematurely, and already he could feel the streambeds of his veins drying up and his lungs turning to smoke and the hollows deepening around his eyes. The weathered pools of flesh around his knuckles, and the perpetual furrow of his brow. Aging. All because of the poison of the vial of death. The beast he had become. And for nothing. Was it for nothing? The sacrifice of his soul. He had lost that long ago; the price of serving the immaculate monster known as Millions Knives. The sacrifice of his mind. Who knew how many shades of delirium lurked there? Waiting for his skull to crack and let them all go running out; the countless horrors that filled every space between the lines in every volume of the story of his life. He had lost his mind to the mental-rapist known as Legato Bluesummers at the age of eleven, when his thoughts had been consumed by another for the first time. It was part of the initiation ritual into the ranks of the Gung-Ho Guns.
And he thought of death. The hollow smile that he loved so well, cracking the outlaw's face until it seemed like it would shatter into pieces like the mask it really was. The darkness showing at the roots of Vash's skull that screamed inevitable death. All the mounds and cities of corpses. All the mountains of debris.
He could see Vash there: sitting crowned King of Sorrow atop a steep pile of rubble with the tails of his coat blowing in the wind, the sharp point of his chin cradled in two gloved hands as the tears slipped down from behind the shades of his tinted sunglasses and into forever. He could almost feel his breath on that day, colored with the reek of death, his eyelashes like wet star points. The bottomless sea of emotion. Of devotion. Of suffering. Of courage. Of grief. Everything that was for nothing if he gave him up now.
And he couldn't give him up now. Wolfwood rode on through that bottomless black night and entered the music man's bedroom. The saxophonist was waiting for him there, naked except for his instrument which he held poised between his thighs like an erection. There was beautiful music that night, sad music he thought, making love through the embers of their cigarettes until, like cigarettes, there was only ashes left of them.
Their bodies as they held each other through the burning darkness, praying secretly that somehow the dawn would never come and they could sleep there in the fading warmth of their fatal embrace without ever opening their tired eyes again. Midvalley, he was a carnival. A festival. A carousel that blazes gold, and he was irridescent drinks in nightclubs and cat-like women with sharp teeth and sharp fingernails and breasts and hips and thighs. He had secrets all his own, a past as dark as Wolfwood's was, his mother the prostitute and the music he loved which turned him into a killing machine. Orpheo Negro. Black Orpheus.
And Judas held his Black Orpheus all through the night, smelling the deep hard salt warmth of his body and the lover's bites that bloomed black underneath his sinew and muscles and bones from their rough coupling- it was always roughest toward the end- as if holding him as close to his body as possible could make water run out of his tired, dried up eyes, or force the blood to pump back into his aching heart. As if that alone could chase away the fear.
The fear of not only dying but living. Not only living but loving. And when he was a younger man, he had truly loved Midvalley as much as he loved Vash now. And in a way he still loved him that much. But the song was ending and they both knew it. How could they not? It was engraved in them. Being surrounded by so much death not only made them hard and cold, but it also made the art of dying very clear for them. And what were they if not dying? Slowy, yes, but dying all the same. And so Judas and Black Orpheus spent their last night together.
At the coming of the dawn, Wolfwood walked to the door and turned to glance over his shoulder. Midvalley lay tangled in the sheets, still sleeping. He wanted that memory to stay with him now; the moment of the last time he would ever see him. The last time he would ever touch his skin. He crept back over to the bed and brushed his lips against the musician's still swollen mouth, and it was so much like a goodbye, that kiss and the eternity in that kiss, that for just one second he regretted all the things they could have been and never were. But if there was anything he'd promised himself he wouldn't do before he died, it was regret. Especially something as insignificant (it wasn't really and he knew it) as a fucked up love affair between two doomed mercenaries whose crooked paths had somehow managed to meet across a lifetime- when how else could it have been given who they were and what they were?
He left for the fortress of the man who was sealing his fate. I'll look back, he said. But he never did.
Knives gave him the message. Knives. With his twisted fang smile and twisted veins that pushed against the marble of his flesh like lines of anger. Maps to the roads and rivers of secrets inside him. The skeletons of memories that made up the shape of a madman. Vash's twin brother. Knives. He said, so calm cool with those liquid morphia lungs and teeth, the sinister voice of him, "Your orders have changed, Chapel. You are no longer to lead him here to me. He knows." There was something accusatory behind that statement, but it didn't matter now. He knew Vash knew.
"Kill him."
It hurt more than he ever imagined it could have. But that didn't matter either. No. Not anymore. Because he wasn't going to do it. But don't think that, don't even try to speak it, there are eyes and voices everywhere here.
He rode back on the flaming motorcycle to his death.
He knew Big Girl would cry. That was something he was sure of after he was dead. But he never expected it to be the Evergreen who would pull that trigger. Well, no. It was Legato wasn't it? But it wasn't something he ever expected. He knew the blue-haired killer could do it, but he never thought that he would do it to him. Not through Chapel. But he wasn't dead when he hit the ground.
Instead he went to Vash. It would be too late by the time he could be brave enough to tell him. Everything. The truth. And it wasn't as if he could stay now, even if Vash knew. And so it was better not to tell him at all. To not make it harder on either of them by uttering those three small words that seemed to make everything harder. He could feel the blood draining out of him, the life slipping from his fingers. It was too soon, and before he knew it he was kneeling at the foot of his own arsenal cross in the house of the all merciful God who'd never shown him as much mercy as he felt he was entitled to. The sole invisible witness to the demise of Nicholas D. Wolfwood. And it really was too soon.
Maybe he and God would have a little heart-to-heart about the way his life had gone when he was dead. He was pretty sure it was justified to say his path of righteousness had strayed a little off the tracks. Things definitely hadn't turned out the way he had percieved. But he would have an eternity to plead his case, right? And maybe he'd be given a second chance. He sure as hell didn't deserve one. But maybe it was better if he never came back to this place. It was the worst place in the world after all. But it would be worth it to see Vash. To see him again. Just one more time. . .
But it was too soon. He said his famous last words. His lungs gave one last blood-thick gurgle and, promptly, he died. No one would ever know the story of his past. No one would ever live to cherish those last words, the regrets he swore he'd never have, because aside from his silent witness, he'd been all alone in there. He'd truly taken his secrets to the grave with him, and towards the very end, he was kind of wishing he hadn't; because maybe then all the people he had hurt and all the people he had loved and all the people inbetween would have been able understand why he had done all of the things he'd done, though there would never be enough reasons to justify it all. And he hadn't wanted to die.
But no one would ever know that either. And did it ever matter? Did it really ever matter? Was it worth it? Was he wrong after everything? Had he made the right choice?
And then he thought of Vash and Millie and Meryl. He would have stayed with them forever if he could have. And he thought of Knives. Midvalley. Legato. The Gung-Ho Guns. Haunting memories, but the memories of his life all the same.
And he thinks of the showdown between brothers that was fated to ensue.
And he thinks of Vash. Vash hollering and guzzling beer and doughnuts in a bar. Vash sobbing over all the wrongness and injustice of the world. Vash painted with the colors of the sunrise as he held him in their bed. Vash's eyes flashing in the darkness as he broke into millions of pieces, shattered, pushed to his limits with suffering. Vash.
And he knows it was worth it. All of it. And he knows he has lived a life worth living for. And most of all, he knows that he has died for something that was worth dying for. And in the end, looking back through all the flashbacks of his life, he knows that to have walked where he has walked, to heaven, to hell, and all the places inbetween, and to have loved, as much as he has hated, as much has he has loved, he wouldn't have changed a thing. He wouldn't have changed anything at all.
And he would do it all over again, if he could.