Chapter 7: The blood-splattered BRIDE
FOUR YEARS AND SIX MONTHS EARLIER IN THE CITY OF EL PASO, TEXAS
In the chapel, a team of investigators was at the scene. Taking photos, checking to scene if all the bodies were dead and try to find cause and time of death before the autopsy table. Not too far from the scene the town sheriff arrived to see what the hell happened. When he arrived, a cop was waiting for him outside. Once out of the car the sheriff said, "Well give me the gory details, Son Number One."
The cop replied, "It's a goddamn massacre, Pop. They wiped out the whole wedding party, execution style."
The sheriff said, "Give me a figure."
The cop replied, "9 dead bodies. And we're talking the whole shebang. Bride. Groom. Reverend. Reverend's wife. They even shot the old colored fella that plays the organ."
The sheriff said, "It would appear somebody objected to this and wasn't able to hold their peace." Both men walked inside and saw the scene. "Good gravy, Marie."
The cop asked, "What'd I tell you Pop? It's like a goddamn Nicaraguan death squad."
The sheriff said, "You better shit-can that blasphemy, boy. You're in a house of worship."
The cop said, "Sorry, Pop. Well, this is definitely the work of professionals."
Sheriff said, "I'm guesstimate Mexican Mafia hit squad." Then he saw the bride. "Or the Chinese. Four, maybe five strong."
The cop asked, "How can you tell?"
The sheriff said, "Well, a sure and steady hand did this. This ain't no squirrelly amateur. This is the work of a salty dog." He walked deeper in the church. "You can tell by the cleanliness of the carnage. Now, a kill-crazy rampage, though it may be, all the colors are kept inside the lines. If you were a moron, you could almost admire it." Then he kneeled in front of the bride. He took off his sunglasses and asked, "Who's the bride?"
The cop replied, "Don't know. The name on the marriage certificate is Arlene Machiavelli. That's a fake. We've been calling her 'The Bride' on account of the dress. But doesn't Asians wear red at weddings."
The sheriff said, "Yes and no. You can tell she was pregnant. Man would have to be a mad dog to shoot a goddamn good-looking gal like that in the head. Look at her. Black silky hair. Beautiful eyes. She's a little blood-spattered angel." Then the body spits at the man face. The sheriff got a napkin and wiped his face. "Son Number One?"
"Yeah?"
"This tall drink of cocksucker ain't dead."
The comatose Bride was lying in her hospital bed, wide open unblinking sightless eyes, that constantly stare yet see nothing. The Bride is at the beginning of her comatose journey. The rain pisses down in buckets in front of the hospital...when…The wheel to an Alfa Romeo rolls up and stops. The car door opens and two yellow galoshes step out into the wet night. A red umbrella opens as rain falls down. The figure in the yellow rainslicker with the red umbrella starts walking towards the hospital whistling. The back of the yellow slicker - walking in the rain towards the hospital's entrance. Her yellow galoshes slapping against the wet asphalt, and splashing through puddles. The woman in the raincoat as she walks from outside into the hospital down the hall, and into the lady's room door. The woman started to dress up in nurse's clothes and even replaced her eyepatch to a white one and when she was done, she inserted a syringe needle in a vial. On the bottle it says, "A lethal cocktail of Mike's own concoction. He calls it, 'Goodbye forever'." The deadly syringe is placed on a nurse's tray. The door marked "ladies" is opened, and a beautiful 6-foot blonde in a white nurse's uniform, with a matching white eye patch over her left eye, steps out, carrying the nurse's tray with the "Goodbye forever"-filled syringe on it. She walks down the corridor towards The sleeping Bride's room. She was known as Ella Driver aka California Mountain Snake. The Bride, alone in her bed, alone in her coma, alone in her room. Elle Driver opens the door to her room and steps inside. The female assassin approaches the comatose woman. Ella looked down at her sleeping target, victim, rival, and opposite number. Elle standing over The Bride's hospital bed, says to her, "I might never of liked you. Point in fact I despise you. But that doesn't suggest I don't respect you. You were a master of a profession that's most difficult to master. Dying in our sleep is a luxury our kind is rarely afforded. My gift to you." As she lifts the syringe off the tray... Her cell phone rings...She curses to herself...there can be only one person on the
other end...she answers it. "Hello, Michael."
"What's her condition?"
"Comatose."
"Where is she?"
"I'm standing over her right now."
"That's my girl. Ella, you're going to abort the mission.
"What!" The female assassin turns away from the wide-eyed stare of The Bride, and paces the hospital room talking in the cell phone.
"We owe her better than that."
"Oh, you don't owe her shit!"
"Will you keep your voice down?"
"You don't owe her shit!"
"May I say one thing?"
"Speak."
"Y'all beat the hell out of the woman. But you didn't kill her. And I put a bullet in her head. But her heart just kept beating. Now you saw that yourself with your own beautiful blue eye, did you not? We've done a lot of things to this lady. And if she ever wakes up, we'll do a whole lot more. But one thing we won't do is sneak into her room in the night like a filthy rat and kill her in her sleep. And the reason we won't do that thing is because that thing would lower us. Don't you agree, Miss Driver?"
After a while she answers back; "I guess."
"Do you really have to guess?"
"No, I don't need to guess, I know."
"Come on home, honey."
"Affirmative."
"I love you very much."
"I love you too, bye-bye." The female assassin puts the phone away and looks down at the comatose Bride with the open eyes. Even though her face is expressionless, she almost seems to be smiling. "Thought that was pretty fucking funny didn't ya? Word of advice shithead, don't you ever wake up."
Four years later…age 24
The comatose Bride, still lies motionless in her bed. A buzzing mosquito, doing loop de loops and figure eights in the air, looking for some warm blood. The mosquito on The Bride's forearm, its stinger dug in her flesh, visibly drawing blood from its host. From that bite alone, woke her up. The Bride sits bold upright in the bead. She has no idea where the fuck she is. Then she remembers what happened at the church. She lets out a scream of pain and her hand goes to the side of her head, as if she were just shot. Her hand feels the metal plate embedded in the side of her skull where the hole was. She knocks against it with her knuckle...it goes...TINK...TINK. Her hands goes down to her belly, only to find it not swollen but flat. She doesn't understand, lifts up her hospital gown and sees a jagged scar, which runs, down her abdomen. Her fingertips trace it. She started to cry at the loss of her child. "Oh, my baby." She quickly looks at the palm of her and counts the lines. The lines in her palm look like a road map. She stops counting, shocked; "Four years." She counts again. "Four years." The Bride's two eyes fill with tears as she realizes her baby is long gone.
When suddenly...She hears foot-steps coming closer so she lay back down pretending to be asleep. It was a hospital orderly. But he wasn't alone. A trucker was with him. "She's right in here."
The Bride decides the best course of action, till she gets her bearings, is to play possum. She throws herself back down on the bed, just as the two men enter her room. They see just what they expected to see, The Bride lying in her bed in her coma. She duplicates her comatose eyes-wide-open-fixed stare. Except knowing she's awake, and sees everything in front of her, creates a slightly different effect. The Bride, however, while she sees the Truck driver for what they are, and she sees The Orderly. The two walked up to the Bride and looked at her. "The prize is $75 a fuck, my friend. You getting your freak on or what?"
The trucker said, "Oh, yeah, boy."
The Bride couldn't believe she's being exhibited in this manner. A look of chagrin crosses her trying-to-be expressionless face. The trucker gave the orderly the money. "20, 40, 60, 75. Yeah. Now, here's the rules. Rule number one: No punching her. Nurse comes in and she got a shiner - or less some teeth, jig's up. So, no knuckle sandwiches under no circumstances. And by the way, this little cunt's a spitter - it's a motor reflex thing but spit or no, no punchin. Now are we absolutely positively clear about rule number one?"
"Yeah."
"Good. Now, rule number two. No monkey bites, no hickeys – in fact no leavin no marks of no kind. But after that, it's allll goooood. Her plummin down there don't work no more, so feel free to cum in 'er all ya wont. Keep the noise down - try not to make a mess, and I'll be back in twenty." The Orderly turns to leave, then remembers something, and turns back. He takes out the most disgusting jar of Vaseline in the history of cinema, and hands it to Warren. "Oh by the way, not all the time, but sometimes this cunt's cunt can get drier than a bucket of sand. If she dry, lube up with this and you'll be good to go. BON-APPETIT, good buddy." And with that, The Orderly's gone.
The Trucker starts giggling. Warren begins to unbuckle the belt that lies beneath his belly. While he looks down to accomplish this, the Bride blinks. Warren begins to climb up on the bed and mount The Bride. "You are the best-looking girl I've had today." Then he started to kiss her. But then he screams. The Bride woke up and bit hard at his lower lip. Didn't take long to take care of the trucker.
She tosses the now brain-dead trucker to the floor. The BRIDE upon waking, without leaving the bed where she lay the last five years, has just killed him. She throws off the bloody blankets, whips her legs off the side of the bed, and tries to stand - then quickly falls to the ground. The Bride is flat on the floor. Her legs and feet don't work. Which means she's stuck on the floor with only a functioning top half, and a completely useless bottom half. What's a girl to do? Down the hallway the Orderly was whistling as he walks. The Bride used water to clean her face of the blood and heard the whistling. She sees the Trucker's knife in a holster attached to his belt. Her hands removed it. The Orderly swaggers down the hall to The Bride's room, red Reeboks slapping against the smooth floor. She snaps the knife's blade open in her. The Orderly pushes open The Bride's door, stopping in shock. He sees an empty bed with bloodstains on it, the dead Truckers on the floor, and no Bride. "Oh shit!"
As he freaks, the Bride reaches out and slashes both of his Achillies tendons. The Orderly went down. The Bride crawls over and drags the stunned fucker across the floor, placing his melon head between the door and the doorframe. The Bride yelled, "哪裡是邁克爾 ((Nǎlǐ shì màikè'ěr? ) Where's Michael?!)" SLAM! "マイケルはどこですか ((Maikeru wa dokodesu ka.) "Where's Michael?!)" SLAM!
The Orderly pleaded. "Please stop hitting me."
But the Bride yelled, "Where's Michael?!" SLAM!
The Orderly yelled, "I don't know where Michael is?"
The Bride yelled, "Bullshit!" SLAM! Then he saw the nametag 'Buck' and letters on his fingers 'fuck'.
Then she remembered something. The Bride seems to look inside her own mind. Buck enter her room that first night, four years ago... He's holding in his hand one of those big flashlights you use in a tent when camping. - It gives off a soft blue light. Buck examines The Bride through the blue. "Well, ain't you the slice of cutie pie they all said you wuz. Jane Doe, huh? We don't know shit about you, do we? I'm from Huntsville Texas, my name's Buck, and I'm here to fuck." He starts to unbuckle his belt.
That made Bride VERY mad. She looked down at Buck and said, "You name is Buck. Right? And you came here to fuck. Right?"
A "how the fuck does she know look," crosses his face. The Bride looks down at him... He tried to plead. "Wait a minute. Wait." And with the door in her hand and one mighty slam, this Texas boy is sent to the Promised Land. Of course, he was twitching first. Then she grabbed his sunglasses, and put them on.
She searches the dead man's pockets, coming up with a set of car keys on a pickup truck key chain that has the words, "Pussy Wagon" on it written in a pimpy font "Pussy Wagon. You fucker." Then she slammed his head one more time. She gathers up all these items, and knife, and then begins to strip Buck of his orderly uniform.
Later on, the elevator doors to the hospitals underground parking lot open, revealing The Bride in Buck's orderly scrubs in a wheelchair. She wheels out of the elevator fast into the parking lot. Her arms spinning the wheels as she goes down the line of cars, looking for a pickup truck that Buck would own...she stops. What made The Bride stop? The ass end of a big, yellow 4x4 hard-body pickup truck, with flames painted along the side, and the words, "PUSSY WAGON," written along the flat-bed hatch door. Pimpy font. The Bride looks at Buck's key chain in her hand. "A 12-year-old in a 40-year-old body." Once she unlocked the door, The Bride pulls herself up into the backseat of Buck's pickup truck. Once in the backseat, she shoves the wheelchair away. It rolls out of control down the parking ramp, and CRASHES. Now the Bride's lying vertically in Buck's truck's backseat. Seemingly out of danger - at least out of sight - but she's still stuck hiding in the hospital. And until she regains full use of her legs and feet, this little Bride ain't goin anywhere or doin anything. Lying flat, with the back of her head propped up against the door, her long, lifeless legs stretched out in front of her, her two bare feet at the end of them, pointing to the sky, the Bride focuses her eyes, her stare, her thoughts, her strength, and all her concentration…on her big toe. "Wiggle your big toe." Toe doesn't move an inch. "Wiggle your big toe." It doesn't move. "Wiggle your big toe."
As I lay in the back of Buck's pickup truck, trying to will my limbs out of entropy, I could see the faces of the cunts who did this to me, and the dick responsible. Members all of "The Deadly Viper Assassination Squad." When fortune smiles on something as violent and ugly as revenge, it seems proof like no other that not does God exist, you're doing his will. At a time when I knew the least about my enemies, the first name on my death list, O-Ren Ishii, was the easiest to find. But when one managed the difficult task of becoming queen of the Tokyo underworld, one does keep it a secret, does one?
O-Ren Ishii: member of Deadly Viper Assassination Squad codename: COTTONMOUTH