Smash!
by Memphis Lupine
Inside, he wondered if it was a sign of the condition of his existence that the blood affected him so little now, but outside he was nothing but cool stone, leaning beside the body and checking the pulse. Two dark fingers slid under the crimson-slicked chin, tilting quietly the head up so the dusty brown hair fanned over the stained alley in a tangled mess, and he blew out a small stream of grey smoke when he felt no heartbeats. Nicholas took his hand from the dead man's neck, resting his forearm on knee and staring with clinical disinterest at the body, bloodied fingers dripping a single tiny goblet of red to the dirt he was crouching in. "God protect your soul," he finally spoke, as if in penance, and he used the same dirtied fingers to gently prod the eyelids down over sightless black eyes.
He stood, foot nudging against the cold metal of the submachine gun and catching his attention briefly, and studied the mess that was the man's chest, somewhat unsettled that he felt no pity or sorrow for the deed. Frowning, he shook his blood-traced hand and, with some effort, hoisted onto his shoulder the massive automatic weapon, thumbing the brim of his hat that it cast his dark eyes into thicker shadows. The sun was clouded over again, having broken free in the beginning morn before being unwillingly dispatched of, and he trudged through the occasional puddles of mud lining the way through the alley back to the awkward automobile waiting silently in the street.
Temporarily resting the heavy weapon on the ground, letting it lean on his calf and balance precariously thusly, he worked the door open with a soft popping sound and hooked his fingers around the submachine gun again. Nicholas pushed it into the thin back seat, the slitted windows in back streaked with faded rain and spots of staining dirt, and he swung the door shut. It clicked into place with a muted sound and he glanced to the sky, wrinkling his nose as he tried to determine whether or not the hovering rain would ever river to the earth.
After a moment was wasted staring, the stiff brim of his fedora cutting sharply across the top bit of his vision, he turned, jacket swirling briefly around his waist as he moved to the ambiguous shop near the alley. Swinging through the rough door, he plunged his hand into the pocket of his trousers, wrapping the clean fingers over an assortment of silver coins and pulling them free to rest in his clasped palm as he approached the counter. "Cigarettes," he announced brusquely to the hollow man waiting there, counting out the appropriate change, "and some water, if you have any."
The bits of silver were immediately scooped into the pudgy, blank man's hand, the weight judged out of habit with an up-and-down swinging of his wrist, and he nodded to the taller man dressed in tones of darkness. The aged cash register of glinting black exposed its drawer with a quiet ding, and the coins were shifted into their allotted spaces before the cashier slid it into its locked position, turning to grasp two pristine cartons. He passed them over the counter and, careful to keep his bloodied hand buried within the matching sleeve, Nicholas accepted them, fitting one box into the breast pocket of his buttoned shirt and the other into his pocket.
"A moment for the water," rasped the man behind the counter, lifting his round forefinger in unconscious example. He forced his way through the thin area squared off by the glazed wooden counter, apron stretched to near ripping over his body as he moved, and the Italian man waiting fingered open the top of the carton in his trouser pocket.
Drawing out one of the ivory cylinders, he dug into his other pocket, flipping open his tinderbox and, pinning the cigarette under his incisors with little effort, striking one of the matches into a whispering flame. He held it to the cigarette's waiting, hovering end, sparking it into a puffing ember nestled in the rolled tobacco hidden within the shield of white paper, and drew in a breath of the familiar bitter tang. A casual, uncaring glance around the place granted him naught other than what he already knew of the establishment: small, inexpensive, and verging on bankruptcy as of the past thirty years, always managing to drag itself up from its own ashes before tumbling once more.
The decorations were simple, shaded plaques mixed in with torn, folded photographs, and he sighed, switching his gaze to the outside world where the first coursing raindrops were slapping the display glass. Breathing in, deeper, he closed his eyes to the remembered smoke and the acquired taste as he waited for the cashier's return, keeping his muscles still out of respect. His mind wandered back to the dead body as of yet undiscovered in the alley, body punctured countless times by the automatic rounds the Thompson submachine delivered each time it was used. Was he losing his humanity, then?
"Water," the cashier's voice, like thousands of sand particles thrust through a fine grate, interrupted, and he took the perfectly round glass from the man's layered hand. Working his hand free of the sleeve's confines, he nodded, blowing a twisting column of smoke out in warning when the man's beady eyes widened at the sight of blood.
He moved back to the door, knocking it open with the smudged toe of his shoe and leaning out enough that he could tip the glass over his hand, and he let the water spill away the blood dried along his fingers, though a few specks clung tenaciously beneath his fingernails. Tapping the last few curling droplets, he glanced back at the sky a second time, seeing a drop of rain collapse to the cracked sidewalk after the passage of several paused heartbeats. Satisfied, Nicholas ducked back into the shop, striding in strong movements of his legs to the counter and setting the glass spinning on the counter.
As he left, twisting around the jutting front of the automobile to enter its driver's seat, pinning his fedora firmly to his head with an open palm and curving fingers, the glass wobbled. Twirling one final time, sides shakily twining up, it slipped over, rolling in a semicircle and drawing to a shivering halt.
She was exhibiting none of the telltale signs of leaving, and he was slowly growing aware that perhaps it might have been better had he never entered the Silver Bell in the first place. "Are you just incredibly stupid," she stressed the word in a way that managed to make it even more insulting, "or can't you read? This is an Italian place, in an Italian-built city, and you're Irish. What the hell were you thinking, trying to come in here?"
He frowned at her, tugging his lower lip into an exaggerated expression of wounded dignity and the ilk, folding his arms protectively over the empty sheaths of paper sprawled over the table before him as he grasped his pencil firmly in his grip. "I just arrived in town last night," he explained haughtily, pausing to swallow the compressed remnant of a roll in the back of his mouth, "and I saw the sign, and I like Italian food. I don't see how any of it happens to be your problem, anyway."
"When someone," she hissed, leaning closer as her grey hazel eyes all but flared streaks of condemning fire at him, "manages to get almost an entire restaurant into an ethnic lust for blood, especially when the restaurant happens to be my uncle's, I think it might be my problem just as much as it is yours. In the event that you were dumb enough to get yourself killed on the premises, my life would get just as messy." She straightened, crossing her small arms over her chest and somehow managing to glare down her nose at him so he squirmed against his will, wrinkling his nose under the bridging metal of the glasses framing his bright emerald eyes. "I'm still curious as to what possessed you to come in."
He felt a spark of annoyance inside, his thin gold eyebrows edging together in ridiculous thought as he reviewed the past minute of their conversation, and he argued, "I already told you, I just got into Winchester, and I wanted to eat," he broke off. "Food!" he cried happily in finale after a few seconds, leaping to his feet and banging his knees on the table with a loud crescendo of noise that stirred pencil, razor, paper, and basket into a clattering symphony. "God!" he added, nearly falling to the floor as he semi-crouched, wrapping his long fingers over the wounded limbs.
"Maria," greeted his somewhat unfriendly salvation as the tall, busty waitress returned with startled eyes and a large tray of food in tow. Smoothing his hands over his wrinkled trousers, the sleeves of his irreversibly dirtied shirt inching up his arms with the steady, comforting motions, he unfolded to his full height and beamed at the curly-haired waitress. The smallest of the three looked at the tray of food blankly, followed with switching her piercing gaze to the extreme thinness that was he, and proceeded to laugh. "Did you mix an order up, Maria?" she smiled in a friendly, teasing manner.
"I'd be more comfortable if I had," the other woman sighed truthfully, turning to slide it from her waist and elbow to the table with some effort and a nudge from her hip. "But I asked him if he was waiting for someone, and he insisted he was alone. After all, Dono says we ought to bring exactly what the customer asks for, no matter how foolish a thing it is." She nodded at the memory of her introductory lecture and smacked her hands together, as if to wipe away the strain of her recent delivery, smiling at the lanky blonde. "I'll get your wine, if you could wait just a moment, sir."
Smiling in his most pleasant manner, he hooked his arms together at his back and leaned slightly over the speechless young woman staring blankly at the large tray now overwhelming the table. "Would you like to share it with me, little girl?" he said cheerfully before it struck him otherwise, unclasping his hands to snatch up the customary fork and knife as he plopped back into the seat. Resolutely ignoring the uncomfortable pain residing in his knees, he adopted an indecisive expression, the fork wavering in his hand as he flicked his eyes from one food to the next until, discarding happily both utensils, he simply grabbed one of the doughnuts. The round bread was identical to the rolls beside it, aside from the former having been deep-fried and glazed over with a fine layer of sticky sugar, and he adeptly shoved the entire thing into his mouth. Looking back at the girl, he smiled widely, unaware of his own abandonment of manners, and asked politely, "Well?" Seeing as his mouth was currently full, it came out a bit more garbled than he had intended.
"I am not a little girl!" she snapped, but reached for one of the butter-lathered rolls anyway. Almost sulkily, she tore off a small bit of the fluffy bread, pinching it between her forefinger and thumb as she jerked her arm back. Forcing the fraction of airy bread into her cheek and chewing it quickly, she swallowed while digging her fingers in and ripping free another bit in a manner that was eerily threatening. "You aren't welcome here," she scowled, narrowing her slender black eyebrows over the darkening grey of her eyes, stuffing the bread pinned betwixt fingers through her lips and chewing with snapping motions.
"That's quite an obvious statement," he retorted through or around the two doughnuts lodged in his mouth, his words slurring into an erstwhile undecipherable blob, and he attempted his most potentially vicious look. It was around this point that he choked, one eye widening as the other immediately shut into an involuntary winking reflex, and tears sprang with great ease to his eyelids, glittering on his eyelashes as he struggled to swallow the pastry blocking the passage of air into his body. "Igh," he suggested helpfully as she rolled her eyes, taking a dawdling moment to squeeze the rest of her roll daintily in her mouth, and he pounded his palm on the table, eyes crossing.
Her own palm smacked him squarely in the back, a surprisingly powerful blow from such a small woman, and he found it had cleared his mouth in a pleasant manner, enabling him to swallow the joined doughnuts and slouch in the booth with a loud sigh of relief. Letting his limbs go numb and relatively listless, he granted her his most obnoxiously innocent smile, long fingers drumming on the tight cloth of the bench. "Thank-you," he gasped dramatically, slapping one hand to his chest and wrinkling the fingers up into inverted arches as he twisted the cloth lying over his heart. "Life is such a beautiful thing, you know."
"Idiot," she snapped, and the back of her hand impacted with the back of his head, sending him into a fit of clutching at his wounded skull and teary-eyed somewhat howling. "Finish eating and get out before you manage to do anything else to make yourself stand out," she all but ordered, tapping her fingertips around the swell of her hips as she scowled impressively, the sole of her leather shoes making a softly abrasive sound as it rubbed across the floor with her shifting movement.
Rubbing sulkily at the back of his head, fingertips probing gingerly about the sore area hidden by his dark gold hair, he grumbled with great displeasure, "Jesus Christ, Son of Mary, you're really fussy, you know that?" His voice ended in a heightened yelp, thrust into pained nasal tones when the knuckles of her middle and forefinger stabbed either side of his nose, quickly swinging together and effectively pinching his nose between her fingers as he worked his jaw. Instinctively pulling away, he came to a delayed conclusion that he should not have, the ensuing hurt brought about by trying to back being one he found notably unpleasant as was probably the intended effect.
"Don't you dare use the Savior's name in vain," she spoke in a voice he might have expected to hear in a casual discussion of the weather, though a steely undercurrent of tangible warning trickled as a spine to her words. As if to emphasize the point she was impressing on him, her fingers tightened sharply, twisting without provocation so he was forced to stand, mouth gaping open as he emitted gasping whimpers, and she smiled very nastily at him. He uneasily received the impression her stormy eyes were attempting to share a glowering death with him, and swallowed, making a pained sound deep in his throat in hopes she would let him free to breathe correctly. "Do you understand?" she asked sweetly.
"Ow, ow," he answered in a nervous voice, focusing at the end of his nose and forcing a thin smile to his face, "um, if I say yes, will you – ow!" He stumbled back after she twisted sharply once more, and then released his nose with the faintest warning; he immediately clasped a hand to his face, feeling for any telltale signs of blood lining his lip and therefore meaning he had an unwanted nosebleed, and gave her a bizarre look, trying to read if she was by any chance partially insane. "That hurt!" he complained softly, pulling his fingers away and peering carefully at the tips, wiggling the joints and feeling relief that there were no red specks anywhere to be seen.
"Just get out of the way as soon as you've paid," she said shortly, twisting on her heel and marching to the long bar stretching along the wall, and he watched her leave, eyebrows knitting together in confused thought as Maria wove her way back, a small elegant bottle in her hands.
"She's scary," he informed the waitress, taking the bottle eagerly from her and picking at the crimped seal tied resolutely around the slender neck. She laughed in mild agreement, called by a humorously drunken man to his table in order to take his heavily inebriated order, and he rolled his head back, wriggling his facial muscles in a series of grimaces. "Might've been more humane to just cut my head off," he muttered, staring at the dark ceiling for a few seconds before he spared a brilliant grin to the benefit of the walls, lolling his head forward.
Popping the cork out, he set the bottle beside his large tray of food and tugged with expensed effort to pry free the papers hidden by the light wood, shuffling them together and sliding the thin stack to the wall as he piled his other writing utensils on the faded white; he wielded his fork and stabbed the drenched noodles of his spaghetti, twirling the metal in his hand and shuffling it to his mouth, wincing slightly at the stinging heat of sauce striking his chin.
"Meryl," Dono said with a booming laugh, cigar working to the corner of his mouth and bobbing as he eased himself out of his chair. "How long's it been since you decided to pop in and visit your old uncle, eh? Two weeks, now! How am I supposed to know if my brother's baby girl is doing herself well if she doesn't come to see me?" He offered his arms out in a swooping bear hug, crushing her in the sort of comfortable pressure that only family could do in a welcomed way, and she accepted it with a tight-lipped smile, patting him gently on his shoulder before pulling free.
"I'd love to say I'm here to chat, Dono," she said, falling into her most business-appropriate voice, taking the polished mahogany chair across from his untidy desk and checking that her skirt was modestly tucked over her knees, "but I'm not, and hell if I'm a liar." Her smile was thin and relatively humorless as he grinned his nasty smirk, thumbing his cigar and chewing thoughtfully at the smoldering end enclosed in his mouth. "Papa wants me to check on the finances, just to be sure everything's going smoothly."
Dono nodded, his greased hair shining under the bared bulb of electrical light expensively wired into the wall and more than a little discomforting to Meryl's stormy eyes after the gentle light of lamps in the dining area. "We've been doing well enough, so far as I can figure," he spoke finally, popping his cigar from his mouth and tapping the ashen end over a small silver platter. The ash fell like a dark snow, crumbling and dirtied by a thousand burnt embers, and collapsed with an inaudible sigh on the sleek metal scarred by past trickling falls of ash.
"One of the girls, though, Elizabeth Hurton, by the name of Sapphire," he continued, leaning back in his cloth-pelted chair as she inclined her head, knowing the girl, "hasn't been showing up for the odd day now and then. Wasn't here this morning, matter of fact, and since she's been datin' the ratface Lex, we can't be too sure she'll be getting around to coming again." He tapped his cigar a second time, as though out of habit or some sinful gesture for luck, and a few sprinkled bits of grey and black spattered like thick, ominous pepper on the smooth wood of his desk.
"Wonderful," commented Meryl, reaching to his desk for an uneven stack of papers she knew to be related to the Silver Bell's finances and the machinations of its work process. "Out of curiosity, though, wasn't Lex supposed to be moving out of town about a month ago?" she continued in a questioning voice that dipped into a murmur toward the end of it, her attention slipping to the responsibilities of the papers she had claimed. She ruffled through the carefully type-writ pages, skimming short fingernails quickly and efficiently down columns and lopsided rows as she checked for any discrepancies or errors that would require deeper attention and a bit of ink to correct.
"Not that it's any of our concern what she wants to do with her life and her body," Dono snorted carelessly, clamping his teeth firmly back over the rolled dusky brown of his fading cigar. "If she wants to ruin a perfectly good job workin' here so she can spend her nights in his bed, so be it." He crossed his arms over his broad chest, black suspenders stark over the white button-up cloth of his shirt, and gnawed habitually at the tobacco creation in his jaw.
"Well, if she's being paid for a job she's not doing," Meryl started in response, shrugging and shrewdly rifling the papers back into an evened pile that she clasped loosely in one hand, "then she needs to be canned. Otherwise she'll just be taking in money that we can use to pay someone else who will actually do her job." She stood, kicking her heel slightly to adjust the press of her uncomfortable pumps, and ran a hand swiftly through her dark hair, every inch the mature and professional businesswoman so often portrayed in the movies.
"Speaking of which," her uncle began, chewing again on his cigar out of sheer reflex, "I hope you won't mind if we have to move your own number from Thursday to tomorrow evening, will you? One of my boys booked some out-of-town dancer a coupla months ago and seeing as I just found out, I can't exactly tell her to come a few days later."
Meryl sighed, fingering the side of her forehead in an old gesture of frayed nerves and weary thoughts, and smiled thinly once again, saying in as kind a voice as she could, "Sure, Dono, I can do my gig tomorrow night. If anyone's looking for me, tell them I went by the Winchester, Southeast, okay?" She turned on her heel, moving through the door of his office in the back of the Silver Bell and strolling in decisive steps toward the dark swath of her coat cast over a chair near the front door's gleaming square of light.
"Oh, dear, I think that's checkmate, sir," Milly Saralee smiled happily, moving her rook the final shimmering square left in her turn, and the aged gentleman sitting across the small table laughed in low approval. "Would you like to play another game with me, sir?" she asked congenially, moving the white pieces back into their set locations as he scooped together the obsidian matches, gently positioning each on the mirroring blocks. She smiled again, satisfied with the tidy arrangement of it all, and ducked her gloved hands into her lap in a delicate fashion, every inch the lady as she had been taught by her beloved mother, her golden brown hair tied up in a simplistic coif topped by an ivory pillbox devoid of the wide brim her other hat had shown.
"Ah, that's a lovely offer, young lady," the elderly man chuckled, standing with a little strain and reaching for his stylish hat, doffing it with a mild bow. "Unfortunately, I fear the missus and I have an obligation we simply cannot remove ourselves from," he added and she nodded in understanding, standing as she gathered the side of her skirts together and offered her arm to his for added balance. "Thank-you, I only need to make it to that desk just a bit up there."
"Step carefully," she said in a serious tone, crinkling her glimmering blue eyes into a light expression that was as friendly as many a thing she did was. "It wouldn't be very nice to hurt yourself, would it, sir?" She shook her own head thoughtfully, answering herself with a brisk twist of her neck, the faint tendrils of hair not pinned up twirling through the air in dainty curves, and idly sidestepped a large bit of gilded luggage left sprawled limply on the richly carpeted floor.
"Thank-you, young lady," the man laughed again, patting her shoulder as she uncurled her arm from his as he stiffly walked to the desk with his coattails turning to face her. She smiled and waved a small farewell, moving about and letting the gauzy cloth of her pale skirt flow around her ankles, and she began aimlessly strolling through the massive, brilliantly decorated lobby.
Knotting her hands at her back, lacy gloves curving with her fingers to the slender heels of her palms, she tilted her gaze up, flicking her eyes over the carved figures above framing the handpainted architecture. "Oh," she sighed, pausing to smile at the delicate, sweeping tails of paint that swirled to form the biblical scene so gently, dreamily waiting along the alabaster ceiling, "how lovely. Mama will just be so very envious when I write home." The thought of her family made her even brighter inside, nearly radiating from her creamy skin as she envisioned the rough-and-tumble southern homestead that was the Thompson plantation, and she nodded her head cheerfully. A solitary golden strand picked free of her pinned coif and brushed lightly around her ear, a glittering testimony to the beautiful things that could be woven from simplicity.
As she picked her way carefully back to the elegant booth she had reclined with the elderly gentleman, happily and kindly engaging him in a wonderful little bout of chess games and ever-shifting pieces, she heard a strong female voice and hesitated. Blinking innocently and unfolding her hands to lay a finger cutely on her chin, she turned to see with wide blue eyes over her shoulder, peering around the sophisticated women and dashing men milling about. "Yes, hello?" she called in honest reply to the voice speaking her name. "I'm Milly!" She pointed idly to herself, standing on her tiptoes as if she were not tall enough to be easily spied already. "Are you there, ma'am?"
"Oh, for heaven's sake, Milly," a familiar voice grumbled as a small woman in an oversized coat and a mature skirted outfit stumbled from a hazy crowd of gaily smoking women in thick furs and glittering gowns, "I'm not a ma'am to you." She straightened her back, smoothing her sleek black hair in the fashionable bob cut just so to frame her swarthy heart-shaped face, and smiled gently at the swelling beam of a smile on the southern woman's sturdier face. "Have you enjoyed Winchester so far?"
"Meryl!" she cried, sweeping her into a happy hug and backing away to continue beaming in a wonderfully engulfing manner. "I didn't think I'd see you as early as this morn, not at all." Milly was the image of a tall, rather broad-shouldered cherub, with the sort of husky handsome beauty that was rarely seen in the English bloodlines, as small and delicate as they tended to be. "That," she added quickly, as a mildly worried look crossed her face, "isn't to say I'm not gloriously delighted or anything, Meryl, but this is such a lovely surprise!" She fairly clapped her hands with her joy, looking every inch the child though she was physically a woman in all ways.
"I'm sure," Meryl remarked wryly, glancing about for a seat and, when finding none, simply stood in as relaxed a position as she could. "Wait, didn't my brother drive you here?" she then asked, momentarily confused as she tried to catch the untied thread that was lurking in their beginning conversation. "Nicholas Wolfwood?"
"Oh, are you the same Wolfwood family?" asked Milly innocently, lifting a hand to protectively cup her pillbox hat, as though the breeze of the doors being tugged open might blow it away for a blithe eternity. "Well, your brother was a very kind man," she nodded, eyes crinkling shut just so in an assuring expression, "and I'd love to meet him again.
"Did you know," she continued cheerfully, tucking Meryl's arm under hers and pluckily escorting her to the deep, royally crimson plush chairs in the gilded lobby, "that he was so very sweet as to drive me all the way up here from lower Maryland? I'd missed my bus, and I hadn't even a penny on me after I paid for my bit of cheesecake, and he gallantly offered to take me to my hotel! I'd missed my bags, though, and so I was prepared to adjourn to my room without anything else to wear, but did you know the driver was waiting for me?"
She would have continued to happily speak had Meryl not given her an insistent tug on her arm, giving her reason to pause and lightly step back one pace, curiously watching the grave expression on the smaller woman's face.
"Be careful around my brother, Milly," Meryl said softly, "because not everything is what it seems." As Milly digested this thought, an unexpected twist that had her bewildered and a bit foggy as to why it had been shared, the dark-haired woman suddenly smiled, a mature exposure of pale teeth in a pale brown face. "There was this incredible idiot at the Silver Bell this morning," she began, picking up the lead where her much taller friend had abandoned it, "with hair like a broom. I mean, really, this man couldn't possibly have been any stupider…"
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Disclaimer: Alas, I still don't own them. I do own all the assorted (and quite few) original characters, much to my dismay, for if they offend anyone, I'm stuck with all the blame. At least they're mostly various extras, right?
Author's Notes: Again, my sincerest apologies for the lateness in this coming. First I was swallowed whole by the One Piece fandom, and then I entered a lovely obsession with Treasure Planet (which has yet to abate), and I managed to peck out a little bit on this part every week until I finally managed to finish it. I owe a great deal to my having just arrived in Egypt for the next two months and, what with trying to adjust to jetlag and not really having much to do just yet, I had plenty of time to sit down and finish. Forgive me?
Thanks (in order, and all of 'em): arbitrary, Quincy007, nosekizzie, Vash-chan AKA Makoto Almasy, EmpressGalaxia, PT-chan, EmpressGalaxia, Vash-chan AKA Makoto Almasy, nosekizzie, Arafel, Quincy007, liliduh, Vash-chan AKA Makoto Almasy, PT-chan, Quincy007, Numena, Hardy, Winter Shmoe, and sailorjr5. All of your comments mean a lot to me, so thanks to all. ^^
Shameless Advertisement: Visit www.faniac.com. They're starting a bimonthly anime fanfic/fanart magazine and are welcoming submissions. It looks to be awesome! ^-