DOGS Ficlet: Only Human
Because, (if it were earthly possible) Badou would go down in an epic gun fight after losing his smokes. It would be written as a story and posted for the world to read and they would raise it up to the pedestal of the great stories about Odysseus or maybe some of Shakespeare’s shit, and the masses would just think it was a story. But those who knew Badou would know better, it was real.
Badou would go down in gun smoke and brimstone. He would go down in a flurry of insanity, of broken manic laughter, of red hair and a hail of bullets. He would go down only after destroying all enemies in sight, and when deprived of his life saving nicotine who knows who was truly friend or foe in the scarred and patched man’s twisted mind.
He wouldn’t go down until he had that cigarette in his mouth. He wouldn’t go down till he had had his last long drag, then he would look down and take note of the bullets and the blood that now littered his body. And that would be when he would fall. He would fall from the blood loss, from a bullet to the heart maybe that didn’t register until the smoke filled his lungs and filled his body with sanity again.
And when he would fall it would be the end of worlds, for how could Badou die? He was a part of a small family of people, a community that wouldn’t admit it, but needed him. They needed him like he needed his cigarettes, they all staid together (united in a strange league of heroes) to keep Badou from keeling over of malnutrition, or dehydration.
Kiri and Mihai and Mimi would wait at Buon Viaggio for him, to rail him about eating and to make him stop smoking, but he wouldn’t show. And they would wait and wait and wait.
Granny Liza and everyone there would wait for him to return and tell them it was a “job well done now give me my fuckin’ money I’m almost out of smokes” but he would never show. And Liza would send someone out (Naoto just might volunteer and say that she needed something to do) and they would come back with the news of his demise.
Nill would dance through the aisles and the pews of the church while the Bishop glided around in the shadows of his blind world waiting for someone to enter (or even just something to do), for Badou to burst in through the doors with some wound that would need fixing and bitching the whole way about how much it “fucking hurt like a bitch if not like a pack of wolves had mauled him.” But he wouldn’t be coming. And they wouldn’t know, they would think he made it through without a hitch, but they wouldn’t know the truth till his body was brought to them.
And Haine.
Haine might be at the church, never admitting that he was waiting for the brain dead Badou, or maybe even at Buon Viaggio ready with a new pack of smokes and a plate of food for his partner. Or maybe he would even be with Badou when his life would end, when the light from his eye died, similar to that of the glow of his cancer sticks being ground by his heel into the ground or being extinguished by the blood on the floor.
Haine often thought of that as well, if he was there, how would he deal with it? He had always dealt with death, but how do you deal with the death of your partner (especially when you know nothing of medical applications)?
Oh, but his last words wouldn’t be something you hear of in bedtime stories or on the big screens. His last words would probably be a deprived laugh, a hollow sounding breath and then maybe even a “Well, shit. Seems like I lost that gamble.”
Badou was the kind of man that could make it out of a job unscathed; he didn’t always, and would usually come out bitching and moaning about his latest wound but he was always still standing in the end. But he also wasn’t the kind of man that would live through the rest of his life and be allowed his almost craved self destruction and even less likely to live till death naturally caught up to an old wrinkled Badou.
Badou would go down fighting to the end of his very last smoke tainted breath, to the very last drop of nicotine laced blood, that’s how he lived, that’s how he’d die. He lived fighting every day, whether it was to live, or fighting just to get some food and sleep.
He fought and his body showed it, the multiple scars, the marks of his life, his past notched into his skin as an unnoticed sign of his humanity.
His humanity is what attracted Haine to Badou, but it is also what caused Haine to believe that Badou was invincible.
To be able to make it out so many times with falsely appointed luck, in truth it was a natural skill, it was an art of Badou’s. Badou was born to be a survivor, he wouldn’t be taken down easily, it would have to be a whole army to take down someone (if there was even anyone else out there like him they probably were rarely seen) like Badou.
He had been built (say built because he doesn’t seem human) with the instinct to out run death, to dodge the lethal blows, to duck out and retaliate in the same way that Haine was built to survive in a different way. Haine often felt he cheated, he didn’t have to use the same sort of skill or instinct or even need the ability to know when running was a better option. Badou had that programmed (carved) into his very bones through years of practice and experience and memories, in very much the same way that Haine had the Black Dog (his survival) infused to the collar on his neck and grafted into his spine. But Badou’s was still better. Haine had said so to him once, and Badou rolled his eyes as if Haine were stupid:
“Of course there is a difference Haine. You go in and you know you’ll come out of it god damned alive, if not better than before. But when I go in I don’t know what the fuck will happen. Will I live through this one again to be able to smile and laugh it off? Or will I be dragged out by my feet, or in a shoe box, and be meeting my fuck ass brother in hell sooner? Don’t look at me like that, we both did plenty to know that neither of us are going to those stupid pearly gates. Plus, I hear Hell has barbeques.
Haine you also don’t understand.
To survive is in human nature, but to want to live is welded into the mind of that human. You want to survive, because you don’t know of anything else, it’s all you’ve ever known. But I want to live, I’ve lived and I’ve seen, and I’ve survived. But I’d much rather live than survive, to survive is to be dead in here and there ain’t no light in your eyes (and he had pointed to his heart like a small child but the look in his eye meant that to laugh now would be to get a fist in your face) but to live is to beat all those fucking odds and to have that spark still in your eyes. But then again… you live too, I can see it sometimes…”
Badou wasn’t invincible. He was human.
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The wind picked up doing little to Haine’s short white hair. His red tinted eyes gazed down at the grave in front of him. The small tombstone that he had inadvertently been seeking out only held a name and the two dates and a small quote. It was engraved with a familiar name, but he would never say it out loud. He just stood there looking gloomily at it as if waiting for something, anything to happen. Someone to ask him if it was a friend’s grave, a gunshot maybe, or to tell him to go home. And almost as if the cosmos of the universe knew what he was thinking it sent him something, or more clearly someone.
“You know you didn’t have to come, why don’t you go home?” A familiar scratchy voice called to him. Haine looked up over the stones of the dead to the face of the person who called out to him. The man moved slowly as if through a dream, as if he weren’t real. He came and stood next to Haine looking down at the grave in front of them. “Ah, see you found it, huh?”
“What was he like?” Haine whispered. His own words sounded far off stolen by the wind and thrown aside. The wind blew past him pushing vibrant red hair into Haine’s face. Haine swatted the serpent tendrils of surprisingly soft strands and glared at his partner. Badou just looked at him and grinned big and toothy, the cigarette dangling precariously from his mouth.
“You would have liked him.” Badou stated toying with his cigarette with his scarred right hand. He gazed a while at the long silvery scar, the most painful notch in Badou’s life, etched onto his hand for eternity to remind him. Haine snorted looking back to the grave. Badou bent low placing a small simple bouquet of flowers, daisies from what Haine knew of flowers, on the mound of dirt that held all of the secrets of the crazed nicotine addict’s past buried six feet under, but Haine would never ask. It just wasn’t something you should do. Badou took one last drag on his smoke before placing it close to the head stone to eventually burn out and seep into the ground beneath.
“What are you doing?” Haine scowled but more intrigued than annoyed. Badou straightened up cracking his back and stretching before pulling out another cigarette.
“Kept my promise to see you bro, you can finish that one off. It’s almost done, but you seem to need it more than I do.” And Badou walked off lighting up a fresh stick of his poison turned life force and allowing the smoke to swirl behind him like a curtain of death and sanity. Haine took one more look at the grave with the name of Badou’s only blood kin.
Dave Nails.
Immortalized forever in the minds and hearts of those who lived.
Always remember, there are no ends in reality.
Haine scans it a little longer as if it will reveal everything, any question he has ever wanted to ask Badou but never had the time (never gained the courage) before jogging to catch up to Badou. Haine felt like he should say something, but he felt that might kill the only moment he ever felt he completely understood his partner. That he understood what was on his partner’s mind, what was always on his mind (never off it).
There were times, when Haine slept on the couch at Badou’s that he couldn’t fall sleep to those mournful sobs that echoed through the walls and in his head, those sobs that were released in his partner’s sleep. Haine knew that he did a similar thing when he slept, which is maybe why he understood Badou so well, but Badou’s were not just grief stricken noises, they were sorrowful desolate howling that would make even the grim reaper toss in bed (“Brother, brother, why oh God, brother… the blood, brother, where are you, oh god”)… but in that substance they were blood kin in a different sense of the word, of the phrase, which is what kept them together and such good partners.
And then Haine sensed a flaw in his thinking, in the way he perceived his partner (his friend, but he’d never get used to the word). Badou would go down in a tale of unworldly proportions, and the story would be heard around the world. That was a lie. Though everyone who knew Badou would grieve, none of them knew how to write a decent story let alone one to trump the masters. No one could write a story to immortalize him forever, none of them completely knew him nor did they understand the mostly mentally unstable red haired chain smoker to be able to fill the book (even just a couple chapters would be impossible), especially with his past. Sure the story of his end would circulate through the neighborhoods and the underground but no stories of his beginnings, of what would make his end so much more spectacular, that would make it that much more poetic and magnificent.
He would be a mystery for the world to solve. If a book was managed, it would be very short… if not a page then maybe a small chapter, but it would end thusly:
Badou wasn’t human, he was invincible, and he wasn’t the greatest person there was. But he lived better than any of us, and died by his own choosing.
Immortalized in the minds and hearts of those who lived (always in those who lived).
For there are no endings in reality.
That's it, thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed, leave comments as you feel! : )