Vendetta
He never really thought about it. After all, who does? It isn’t visible, its presence was merely a vague blue line running along his wrist or under the skin at the bend of his elbow. Yet, another blurred indication of its subtle existence was the gentle thrum of vitality at the intersection of jaw and neck acting as a poignant illustration of a lover’s mortality. A more pragmatic reminder was the slow seeping whenever he nicked his chin shaving but all it took was a tiny piece of toilet paper to clot the site and it was quickly forgotten.
Beyond that it’s something which doesn’t impinge upon his thoughts until it inevitably and brutally demands his attention. Until a bullet pierces his flesh or someone manages to get under his defenses and a knife slices through muscle and viscera and then he can’t avoid acknowledging its presence. Though even on such repetitively frequent occasions of violence, he still doesn’t think about it. No, he just deals if he can or rants if he can’t.
Sometimes it’s superficial and he doesn’t even pay anymore attention to it then to a shaving cut. At other times it requires stitches and antibiotics which are all done sub rosa through the nonjudgmental agency of a friend in the medical profession. Yet, the worst times are the ones where there isn’t any way of avoiding hospitalization. He can’t even choose which aspect of the ordeal he loathes the most-the loss of control and dignity, the lapse in time awareness which always infuriates him, the need to be up and gone even if it involves ripping out intravenous needles and leaving shrieking monitors behind. He despises them all and he consistently short circuits the healing process each and every time.
Afterward, ugly puckered scar tissue is left as a reminder of what occurred and on rainy days it is sometimes accompanied by a deep abiding ache which indicates the nerves have retained the memory even if his brain decided against it. Regardless, once it’s done, once the wound is healed, it still isn’t something he thinks about. It’s simply an unfortunate aspect of his life, his job and maybe even his avocation.
This though is different. To start with it’s not his. To finish with it’s not his. He blinks back the liquid pooling in his eyes, he scrubs at the wetness on his face and tries unsuccessfully to pretend it’s the rain, only the rain, always the rain. He’s on his knees scrabbling for a pulse, hunting for that vulnerable juncture where life meets proof and finds nothing. He sobs, well someone sobs, because it can’t be him.
It is diluted and spreading, a cherry colored lake that fades to pink on the distant asphalt shores. There isn’t any point, he knows that, some part of him absolutely knows that because besides the fluid there is also bone and a spongy, dull looking tissue. He can’t quite process the fact that he’s looking at the actual source of all of that fierce, formidable intelligence. How can something which was once overflowing with such grace and agility be now summarily reduced to these sad dirty traces, insubstantial and torn asunder?
Lightening flares, an immense shearing of light that illuminates everything in stark bas relief. It’s followed so closely by the thunder that everyone jumps. The storm is wild but it isn’t a mark on his unrestrained grief. Someone is pulling him back, muttering something about preserving the crime scene. He lets out a wild bitter bark of laughter. He knows, they know, anyone with eyes knows, there isn’t a crime scene in this deluge, there’s just unrepentant death.
He shakes off the anonymous hand. He is indifferent to their presence, their defined duty which he doesn’t believe they’ll pursue wholeheartedly anyway. After all, isn’t it a case of just desserts, mobsters killing mobsters? Yet, whether they try to solve this murder or not, it doesn’t matter because it’s not their obligation, it’s his.
He stares down once more, a final look to purposefully seer the image upon his retinas. The scene is ill lit in a monochrome of alternating shadow and light. It appears that the veil of rain is in tacit collusion with the night. Together they meld everything so that the monstrous wounds are mercifully altered to become mere hints of what they later will reveal under the piercing lights of the morgue.
He knows there are others, loved ones, needy ones but they don’t register. Before tonight, he always helped him protect and serve the others. He never asked, never expected anything for himself. Yet, tonight all that is altered forever. Now he would be the mission, he would be avenged. It was all he understood to do. Vengeance wasn’t a code, it wasn’t a way of life, it was his raison d’etre and without it he would cease to exist.
It’s enough, he swivels around to leave, the usual clicking of his boots on the street suborned by the puddles to become splashes of sound, his leather jacket ruined and dripping. It takes him six months of unending effort to find them all. Each one dies in a whistling hail of bullets, each one leaches out his life lying in a replicated lake of red fluid, each one gazes unseeingly up at a rain drenched sky which weeps unceasingly for the dead boy.
He thinks about it all the time. A red dress, a woman’s crimson nail polish, a blaze of magenta as a car zooms by, they all remind him. He cuts himself shaving and his hand trembles uncontrollably when he applies pressure to the small wound. He can still shoot, he can still fight, he isn’t useless by any means. Yet, the one thing he can’t do is sleep because all he dreams about is drowning within an endless ocean of foaming scarlet that pulses and pounds in his mind until he wakes up screaming.