Post by wblstudios on Apr 28, 2006 9:09:42 GMT -5
Director’s note: even for Ellis, this chapter is somewhat gruesome, and graphic. At the very least rated R, if not NC-17, but nothing illegal. Reader discretion is advised.
---
The earliest of mornings, the bleakest of midnights, brought what three individuals would hope to be the end. For Kikyo, cowering in a corner in the Subway/gas station, even through the pallor of fear brought by Ellis’ darker heart, she wished to somehow end this suffering of the living corpse, Ellis. For Ellis herself, the gun aimed at her temple was a blessing with to splatter her brains across the vacant parking lot and with them, end this existence between life and death. For the one-handed, 400 pound Latino thug Big Hector, this would be the end to the shortest vendetta he’d even been a part of.
There are no endings in this world. Spirits move on. Dreams and hopes are passed down. Ambitions are taken up and passed along.
Guns jam.
After a fat finger pulled for a good three seconds on an immobile trigger, a bloody stump banging against it, the gun was of no more use to Big Hector than a projectile, which he tossed in frustration. Striking the corpse girl in the head. The large, hard lump of steel, not tossed with enough voracity to break bone, but drew blood from the side of Ellis’ head. For once, Ellis didn’t enjoy the blood pouring out of her body. Someone else causing the wound did nothing to slake her cutting thirst. Just served to help that intangible inside of her overtake her for the briefest of moments.
That intangible that took all rational thought, and turned it into a need to cause pain to all those that brought it upon her, and the one person in this world she cared about. The intangible that drove her into the big man’s gut, knocking him down. That plunged her hands deep into the pockets of his low-rider jeans. That found the Corner Store Bouriquas’ trademark switchblade. That plunged her hands into the pants themselves. That plunged the knife into a place where no knife should ever be plunged. That made sure that there would never be any more Little Hectors.
The intangible that left Ellis to stand on her own two feet, to stare at the carnage and the agonized, high-pitched screams of the new eunuch. The voice in the back of her mind that comforted her, looking at the scene she’d almost unconsciously caused. This man wasn’t an innocent. She hadn’t castrated an innocent. She stabbed a low class, worthless thug, a gangsta, in a way that would assure his semen wouldn’t spread and pollute the rest of the world. That told her that Kikyo was safe. That this man was going to live. That she wasn’t a murderer.
The voice that told her she should go back to the hotel and take a shower as soon as possible. Not because of all the blood covering her, but because of where some of that blood had come from. She was almost sure over the scent of blood, that Big Hector had made the last use of what he no longer had easy access to, to piss himself.
Unlike a normal 20 year old girl in Ellis’ situation, she didn’t vomit the second she got back inside the Subway/gas station/scene of the crime. But in washing her hands and scarred arms, she emptied the soap from both sink-side dispensers and the handicapped stall. As sirens wailed outside, the sinking feeling in the living dead girl’s gut took hold. She saved Kikyo’s life, but one doesn’t do something like plunge a switchblade into a man’s cock and not go to jail.
She leaned against the one-way door back to the outside. Heard the police speaking into their radios. Heard the report of just where Big Hector’s injury was. Heard them laughing. They wouldn’t laugh if he was going to die, she thought. But more than anything, she heard a tiny little voice. A tiny little voice that spun a tale of a gang battle, of a bloody skirmish and a boxcutter left by a gang member, not Ellis. A tiny voice giving a description of a gang member that could fit a thousand and one thugs, but making sure to keep going back to the orange headband he wore. The cops confirming that indeed, the Corner Store Bouriquas and the Orange City Peelers had been going at it in recent weeks.
In other words, Kikyo was giving a rock-solid alibi. And with no other witnesses, the old man and the ‘sandwich artist’ having been holed up in the men’s room, who was going to think a 16 year old child would lie?
Ellis heard the sirens disappearing, going off into the night, and the heavy breath held in her frail chest was finally exhaled. So relieved was she, that both Kikyo and the man she stabbed were going to live, that she almost missed that tiny little voice get on a cellular phone and call for a ride back to the hotel.
Of all the people she thought she’d have to deal with that night... the police, the Corner Store Bouriquas, the reaper... she thought she could handle Josephine.
Outside, it had started raining...
---
The sounds of running water cut as Ellis finished getting rid of the last vestiges of the night from her body. Emerging from the bathroom in a pair of track pants and a “Silent Hill” t-shirt, the living corpse took a seat on Kikyo’s bed. Josephine had slipped out of her street clothes and back into a more comfortable green bra and panties set. Across from opposite beds in her hotel room, Josephine was the first one to break the silence tainted only by the “Mad About You” rerun on the television.
“This thread of fate that ties us together... I don’t fucking like it.”
“It’s not a thread. It’s her.”
“That’s why I don’t cut it. Kikyo’s managed me for about a year now, ever since my sister and I broke up our tag team, and I trust her judgment. Ever heard of Violent Drunkard? We were undefeated for three fucking years before we split.”
Small talk... a luxury that, after this hellacious night, Ellis would allow herself.
“Why’d you break up?”
“Caught my sister sucking my fiancee’s cock.”
And just like that, the small talk was over, and Ellis and Jojo left Helen Hunt and Paul Reiser to entertain them for a while. During the opening credits for another episode of the modern classic, Jojo again broke the silence.
“I do appreciate you looking after Kikyo. But I want you to understand, I’m not going to get mixed up in your shit. You take care of Tommy Havock and Jack Blades, I’ll take care of Genocide.”
“To be honest, she kind of saved me tonight, as much as I saved her.”
“She does that.”
“You were wise to hire her.”
“Fuck yeah. Hey, whatever you’re cooking in there, Kikyo, smells fucking great!”
As soon as the international superbitch uttered those words, Kikyo emerged in her “PokeMon” pajamas, arms full of American late-nite delicacies for once, instead of the usual sushi and rice, there were pizza rolls, popcorn, and the like.
There, in room 404 of the South Ashfield Heights Hotel, in the most unlikely slumber party ever, a tenuous alliance was made. In the morning Jojo and Ellis would again go their separate ways, Jojo to ‘beat the shit out of your favorite wrestler’ with Kikyo by her side, and Ellis to walk the path she was destined to alone, down a road that led between madness and salvation, between life and death, through Tommy Havock and Jack of Blades, over the Television Title, and through to an ending even she couldn’t see coming.
But for that one night, there were no wars to be fought. Just two women brought together by a thread of fate named Kikyo Daioh.
--
Epilogue
The walk from Room 404 after the impromptu snack session and “Mad About You” marathon, back to Ellis’ room 302, was just barely enough time for Kikyo to make a small observation she obviously had been keeping to herself until Jojo was out of earshot. As Ellis slid out her room keycard, Kikyo stared over the walkway balcony, at the clear blue water in the pool that seemed to be the hotel’s focal point.
“Did you notice that when were coming back, how hard it was raining? I sort of feel like it was more than that. Like God was crying for you.’
The concept gave Ellis a half-second of pause. “How can you be sure of that?”
“I can’t. I just believe. It’s a belief that helps a lot of people get by.”
“What belief is that?”
“That God loves you.”
Conversation ended for the night, but that last line rung in Ellis’ head for the longest time...
End Junesong Provision.
---
~Ellis
Featuring Josephine.
---
The earliest of mornings, the bleakest of midnights, brought what three individuals would hope to be the end. For Kikyo, cowering in a corner in the Subway/gas station, even through the pallor of fear brought by Ellis’ darker heart, she wished to somehow end this suffering of the living corpse, Ellis. For Ellis herself, the gun aimed at her temple was a blessing with to splatter her brains across the vacant parking lot and with them, end this existence between life and death. For the one-handed, 400 pound Latino thug Big Hector, this would be the end to the shortest vendetta he’d even been a part of.
There are no endings in this world. Spirits move on. Dreams and hopes are passed down. Ambitions are taken up and passed along.
Guns jam.
After a fat finger pulled for a good three seconds on an immobile trigger, a bloody stump banging against it, the gun was of no more use to Big Hector than a projectile, which he tossed in frustration. Striking the corpse girl in the head. The large, hard lump of steel, not tossed with enough voracity to break bone, but drew blood from the side of Ellis’ head. For once, Ellis didn’t enjoy the blood pouring out of her body. Someone else causing the wound did nothing to slake her cutting thirst. Just served to help that intangible inside of her overtake her for the briefest of moments.
That intangible that took all rational thought, and turned it into a need to cause pain to all those that brought it upon her, and the one person in this world she cared about. The intangible that drove her into the big man’s gut, knocking him down. That plunged her hands deep into the pockets of his low-rider jeans. That found the Corner Store Bouriquas’ trademark switchblade. That plunged her hands into the pants themselves. That plunged the knife into a place where no knife should ever be plunged. That made sure that there would never be any more Little Hectors.
The intangible that left Ellis to stand on her own two feet, to stare at the carnage and the agonized, high-pitched screams of the new eunuch. The voice in the back of her mind that comforted her, looking at the scene she’d almost unconsciously caused. This man wasn’t an innocent. She hadn’t castrated an innocent. She stabbed a low class, worthless thug, a gangsta, in a way that would assure his semen wouldn’t spread and pollute the rest of the world. That told her that Kikyo was safe. That this man was going to live. That she wasn’t a murderer.
The voice that told her she should go back to the hotel and take a shower as soon as possible. Not because of all the blood covering her, but because of where some of that blood had come from. She was almost sure over the scent of blood, that Big Hector had made the last use of what he no longer had easy access to, to piss himself.
Unlike a normal 20 year old girl in Ellis’ situation, she didn’t vomit the second she got back inside the Subway/gas station/scene of the crime. But in washing her hands and scarred arms, she emptied the soap from both sink-side dispensers and the handicapped stall. As sirens wailed outside, the sinking feeling in the living dead girl’s gut took hold. She saved Kikyo’s life, but one doesn’t do something like plunge a switchblade into a man’s cock and not go to jail.
She leaned against the one-way door back to the outside. Heard the police speaking into their radios. Heard the report of just where Big Hector’s injury was. Heard them laughing. They wouldn’t laugh if he was going to die, she thought. But more than anything, she heard a tiny little voice. A tiny little voice that spun a tale of a gang battle, of a bloody skirmish and a boxcutter left by a gang member, not Ellis. A tiny voice giving a description of a gang member that could fit a thousand and one thugs, but making sure to keep going back to the orange headband he wore. The cops confirming that indeed, the Corner Store Bouriquas and the Orange City Peelers had been going at it in recent weeks.
In other words, Kikyo was giving a rock-solid alibi. And with no other witnesses, the old man and the ‘sandwich artist’ having been holed up in the men’s room, who was going to think a 16 year old child would lie?
Ellis heard the sirens disappearing, going off into the night, and the heavy breath held in her frail chest was finally exhaled. So relieved was she, that both Kikyo and the man she stabbed were going to live, that she almost missed that tiny little voice get on a cellular phone and call for a ride back to the hotel.
Of all the people she thought she’d have to deal with that night... the police, the Corner Store Bouriquas, the reaper... she thought she could handle Josephine.
Outside, it had started raining...
---
The sounds of running water cut as Ellis finished getting rid of the last vestiges of the night from her body. Emerging from the bathroom in a pair of track pants and a “Silent Hill” t-shirt, the living corpse took a seat on Kikyo’s bed. Josephine had slipped out of her street clothes and back into a more comfortable green bra and panties set. Across from opposite beds in her hotel room, Josephine was the first one to break the silence tainted only by the “Mad About You” rerun on the television.
“This thread of fate that ties us together... I don’t fucking like it.”
“It’s not a thread. It’s her.”
“That’s why I don’t cut it. Kikyo’s managed me for about a year now, ever since my sister and I broke up our tag team, and I trust her judgment. Ever heard of Violent Drunkard? We were undefeated for three fucking years before we split.”
Small talk... a luxury that, after this hellacious night, Ellis would allow herself.
“Why’d you break up?”
“Caught my sister sucking my fiancee’s cock.”
And just like that, the small talk was over, and Ellis and Jojo left Helen Hunt and Paul Reiser to entertain them for a while. During the opening credits for another episode of the modern classic, Jojo again broke the silence.
“I do appreciate you looking after Kikyo. But I want you to understand, I’m not going to get mixed up in your shit. You take care of Tommy Havock and Jack Blades, I’ll take care of Genocide.”
“To be honest, she kind of saved me tonight, as much as I saved her.”
“She does that.”
“You were wise to hire her.”
“Fuck yeah. Hey, whatever you’re cooking in there, Kikyo, smells fucking great!”
As soon as the international superbitch uttered those words, Kikyo emerged in her “PokeMon” pajamas, arms full of American late-nite delicacies for once, instead of the usual sushi and rice, there were pizza rolls, popcorn, and the like.
There, in room 404 of the South Ashfield Heights Hotel, in the most unlikely slumber party ever, a tenuous alliance was made. In the morning Jojo and Ellis would again go their separate ways, Jojo to ‘beat the shit out of your favorite wrestler’ with Kikyo by her side, and Ellis to walk the path she was destined to alone, down a road that led between madness and salvation, between life and death, through Tommy Havock and Jack of Blades, over the Television Title, and through to an ending even she couldn’t see coming.
But for that one night, there were no wars to be fought. Just two women brought together by a thread of fate named Kikyo Daioh.
--
Epilogue
The walk from Room 404 after the impromptu snack session and “Mad About You” marathon, back to Ellis’ room 302, was just barely enough time for Kikyo to make a small observation she obviously had been keeping to herself until Jojo was out of earshot. As Ellis slid out her room keycard, Kikyo stared over the walkway balcony, at the clear blue water in the pool that seemed to be the hotel’s focal point.
“Did you notice that when were coming back, how hard it was raining? I sort of feel like it was more than that. Like God was crying for you.’
The concept gave Ellis a half-second of pause. “How can you be sure of that?”
“I can’t. I just believe. It’s a belief that helps a lot of people get by.”
“What belief is that?”
“That God loves you.”
Conversation ended for the night, but that last line rung in Ellis’ head for the longest time...
End Junesong Provision.
---
~Ellis
Featuring Josephine.
