Chapter 2: The Blood-Splattered Bride
Four years earlier in the city of El Paso, Texas...
The sun was slowly descending towards the horizon, but it was still high enough to be aggravatingly warm. The highway leading to the city was abandoned, nothing on it but dust.
Perfect driving conditions thought Sheriff Guthrie as he checked his watch. The call from his son had come in about ten minutes ago. Something about a multiple homicide, he didn't know. Normally he couldn't have given a shit about it, but his son was his son, so he decided to drive over, see what he could do.
The radio crackled a mixture of static and lonesome country music. Guthrie adjusted the radio dial, trying to clear out the crackling nonsense. A tinny voice with a drawn-out drawl introduced a piece of music, and a repetitive riff came up on the radio, followed by the unmistakable sound of Charlie Feather's voice.
Guthrie sighed, listened to it for a bit, then spat out of the window, ignoring the music as much he could. Thankfully, the church came into view up ahead. Guthrie stopped the car, put it into neutral, and looked up at the weather-beaten face of his boy.
"Well, give me the gory details, son number one." His son shook his head. "It's a goddamn massacre, Pop." Guthrie got out of the car, and followed his son as they ambled towards the church. A nearby cop nodded at the two as they passed. "They wiped out the whole wedding party, execution style."
Guthrie shifted his jaw from side-to-side. God, I need a smoke he thought bitterly. "Gimme a figure." "Nine dead bodies, and we're talking the whole shebang." he son drawled. "Bride, Groom, Reverend, Reverend's wife..." He shook his head bitterly in disgust. "Hell, they even shot the ol' coloured fella that plays the organ."
Guthrie pulled a wry smirk. "T'would appear to me that somebody objected to this union, and weren't able to hold their peace." The two men stepped in front of the church door, blocking out some of the harsh evening sun. "Good gravy, Marie..." Guthrie muttered, then spat again. They walked in, their boots clunking against the pine floor distinctively.
"What did Ah tell you, Pop, like a goddamn Nicaraguan death squad..." Guthrie reprimanded his son about the blasphemy, and his son apologised bashfully. He looked around again, observing the bodies, the bullet-holes, the dust-scuffs on the ground... "Well, this is definitely the work of professionals... I'd guesstimate a Mexican Mafia hit squad... Four, maybe five strong..." He said with a tone of one who had seen all of there was to see in the world. "How can yah tell?"
Guthrie sniffed and wiped his nose briefly. "Well, a sure and steady hand did this. This ain't no squirrelly amateur, no..." He pulled a faint grimace. "This is the work of a salty dawg..." He walked forward, pointing out each object as he mentioned them. "You can tell by the cleanliness of the carnage. Now, a kill-crazy rampage though it may be, all the colours are kept inside the lines..." He shrugged faintly, wiping the frosting of sweat of his forehead. "Hell, if you was a moron, you could almost admire it..." he trailed off.
His rolling gait had taken him to the bloodied form of the bride. He knelt down, staring at her bruised face. He slipped off his sunglasses. "Who's the bride?"
"Dunno. The name on th' marriage certificate is `Arlene Machiavelli'." Guthrie's son snorted, then rolled his eyes comically. "That's a fake. We've been calling her `The Bride' on the account of the dress." Guthrie nodded. "You can tell she was pregnant..." He started, and then shook his head. "A man'd have to be a mad dog to shoot a goddamn good-looking gal like that in the head..." He leaned closer, his hand trailing a few loose strands of hair out of her face. "Look at her... Hay-coloured hair... Big eyes... She's a little blood-splattered angel..."
The Bride responded by spitting suddenly into Guthrie's eye. Guthrie clenched his jaw, and sighed slowly. "Son number one?" He said calmly. "Yup?" His son said, attention at something else. "This tall drink of cocksucker ain't dead..."
Two weeks later, in the local hospital of El Paso...
In comparison to the hot, dry days of naught but a fortnight ago, the weather had turned dark and tempestuous. Rain spattered against windows, and the wind howled around corners.
In the comatose ward, nick-named the `Raimi' ward, laid the Bride, her skin clear of blood and pinkish from the healed bruises. She was in a deep coma, with no response to any outside occurrence.
Down in the lobby, the doors opened, and a brief shower of rain fell in, accompanied by a tall, blonde woman. The woman wore a long, beige coat with matching trousers, which had all the creases, stitches, pockets and buttons drawn on, and held a long, knife-like, red umbrella. She strode in, whistling an eerie tune, her lips curved into a perfect `o' and her heels clicking in time with the tune.
She slowly walked up to the Bride's ward, fixing any curious employees with a contemptuous glare. As she was just outside from the Bride's ward, she turned and walked into the ladies bathroom.
She got into a cubicle, and locked the door. Her handbag was opened with a click, and nurse-white clothing came out, followed by a bottle of clear, red liquid and some hospital equipment. A quick change of clothes was done silently, a small nurses cap placed daintily on top of her head, a syringe extracted a small volume of the liquid and last but not least......a new, red-cross eye patch was worn.
The woman walked out of the bathroom, her new shoes squeaking silently against the linoleum. She turned and peered through the window in the door, saw the Bride, and smiled. This was Elle Driver. To the other DiVAS, she was known as Elle. If you wanted to piss her off, use her codename, California Mountain Snake.
Elle opened the door and walked towards the Bride's gurney. She delicately placed the hospital tray with the needle of poison on the bedside cabinet, and then leaned over, placing her fingers over the Bride's nose. She felt the warm breath against her skin, and smiled once again. She leaned back.
"I might never have liked you..." She rolled her eye and snorted. "...point in fact, I despise you." She raised a finger. "But that shouldn't suggest that I don't respect you." Elle pulled the rubber cover off of the needle, and placed it into the Bride's IV tube.
"Dying in our sleep, is a luxury our kind is rarely afforded." She placed her thumb over the plunger. "My gift, to you..." Her phone rang, scaring the beejesus out of her. "Oh, for fuck's sake..." Elle muttered pulling her phone out, opening it and raising the antennae. "Hello, Bill." She said in a sickly sweet voice.
"What's her condition?" Bill gripped the hilt of his sheathed sword from where he sat."Comatose..." Elle said, Bill pulled the sword from the sheath a few inches, then let it down absentmindedly."Where is she?" He asked. "I'm standing over her right now." Bill smiled. "That's my girl."
Elle giggled daintily. There was a cough, then; "Elle, you're going to abort the mission." Her jaw dropped. "WHAT?!" She shouted. "We owe her better than that."
"OH, YOU DON'T OWE HER SHIT!" Elle yelled. "Will you keep you're voice down?" "oh, you don't owe her shit!" Elle hissed. "May I say one thing?" Elle accepted the request silently. "Y'all beat the hell outta that woman, but, you didn't kill her. I put a bullet in her head, but her heart jes'... kept on beating." A pause. "Now, you saw that with your own, beautiful blue eye, did you not?" Elle sighed miserably.
"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 murder her in her sleep. And the reason we won't do that thing is because..." The voice went cold. "...that thing would lower us. Don't you agree, Miss Driver?" "I guess..." She muttered sadly. "Do you really have to guess?"
"No..." She sighed, sounding like a penitent schoolgirl. "I don't really have to guess. I know." "Come on home, honey." Elle whispered goodbye, and shut the phone venomously, then walked back to the Bride's gurney. "I bet you thought that was pretty fuckin' funny, didn't you?" Her face darkened, and her lips twisted into a scowl. "Word of advice, shithead. Don't. you ever wake up."
4 years later, in the local hospital of El Paso, Texas...
Time had passed, people were born, people had died. Businesses had risen and fallen, fortunes made and lost. The world had changed everywhere but in the `Raimi' ward of the El Paso hospital, where only the hushed hsss-thumps! of breathing apparatus punctured the cloying silence. The mosquito flew through the air, her wings making her distinct and highly annoying whine. She circled the room, choosing her next host at a leisurely pace. She alighted on the pale flesh of the Bride's arm, and stuck her proboscis into the vein pulsing slightly near the surface.
The mosquito injected the anti-clotting chemical into the bloodstream, preventing a scab from forming. Blood began to flow from the vein into her stomach as she began to feed. The Bride's hand slammed down on the insect as she sat up with a hollow cry. Her throat was dry, her skin clammy, where was she? She wa-
"No, kiddo, at this moment, this is me at my most..." he trailed off, pursing his weathered lips momentarily. "...masochistic." There was the hollow, clanking sound of oiled metal as the hammer was pulled back. Her lips, cracked and dry trembled. "Bill?" He paused, the gun levelled at her head. "It's your ba-" The trigger was pulled, and the hammer fell upon the firing cap of the bullet. There was the spark, which propelled the slug through the barrel, spinning slowly from the hair-thin grooves on the inside of the gun, before spitting out of the pistol, haloed by a fiery wreath...
She yelled in shock, clutching her hand to the side of her head, then paused. Slowly, she moved her head to her temple, touching it lightly. There was a dull `thunk' as her fingers rebounded off of the steel plate. Her face twisted into disgust, marred with disbelief, then despair... Her hands grasped her stomach, and then lifted her gown up slowly, revealing a jagged scar. Her breathing slowed, becoming more ragged, and her eyes became watery.
Then she screamed, in an ear-twisting cocktail of anger, horror and denial. "My baby..." Her voice was a tear-thickened whisper, not the usual harsh snap it was. "They took my baby..." She held her hands out in front of her face, looking at the lines of her palms. The distinctive whorls and lines of her palms giving her irrefutable evidence of how long it had been. "Four years." She whispered. "Four years..." Her eyes clenched, tears squeezing out and trickling down her reddened face.
A whistling, and the sound of footsteps. She put aside her sorrow, and began to think, her mind racing for a solution. The footsteps became louder, and now she could detect two pairs of feet... She slammed herself back down on the bed just as the door opened. Two men entered, one a nurse, another some type of trucker-type person. "The price is seventy-five dollars a fuck my friend..." The nurse started, and the Bride knew that this was not going to be a good way to wake up.
Her mind was racing. She had been in some sort of a coma for four years. She knew her husband was dead, along with everyone else at her wedding, and then she recalled what happened. DiVAS. Five members; Vernita Green, Elle Driver, O-Ren Ishii, Budd and... Bill.
They were responsible. Responsible for killing nine people at her wedding, responsible for her child, and responsible for her losing four years of her life. She knew, in that instant, that nothing but cold-blooded revenge would sate her. Nothing else. But what to do now...? 
The two men had stopped talking, and she felt the weight of an extra person on her gurney. The man chuckled, muttering to himself about her appearance, and then stuck his tongue in her mouth. Whereupon she ate it.
She must've fainted after that, because when she opened her eyes, the man was lying on top of her, rapidly cooling. She pushed the corpse off, and washed her face clean using a nearby water bottle, gagging at the aftertaste of flesh and blood. Whistling. She hurdled off of the gurney, landing on her feet. However, her legs, after four years of atrophy, rebelled under her weight, and collapsed, sending her down onto the linoleum with a harsh crash. Footsteps with the whistling, getting closer. She reached over to the dead man's belt, pulling out a small flick-knife and opening it with a practised ease. The footsteps, getting closer...
Buck walked over to the door, and knocked on it sharply. "Hey, bud! Time's up! Coming in, ready or not!" He opened the door, a smirk firmly on his face. "Did you have yourself a good time?" His eyes widened as he saw the trucker sprawled against the floor, blood pooling from his limp mouth like a cheap special effect, and the gurney empty. "Hol-" The Bride lashed out from behind him, the blade splitting his heel open with a snapping sound. Buck collapsed with a sharp cry, landing harshly on his head, splitting his head open.
He was being pulled over to the door. Had someone seen him fall and was taking him to a doctor? What had happened to Warren...? He stopped at the doorway, and the blonde-haired chick, the one who was in a coma, came into view. He tried to open his mouth, but only made a slight mumbling sound. The woman responded by smashing the door against his head. His head rang from the blow. Her mouth moved, but he couldn't make out what she said. Again the door slammed on his head.
"Please stop hitting me..." he muttered, trying to raise his hands to defend himself, but his arms seemed all rubbery. "-ere's Bill!" The voice came into hearing, along with the sharp, doubled pain, as she smashed the door yet again into his head. "I dunno..." Buck mumbled. "Bullshit!" The woman yelled, reached for the door again, then noted the writing on Buck's hand... "Well, ain't you the slice of cutie-pie they all said you wuz... ...Well, I'm from Huntsville, Texas. My name's Buck." A self-satisfied chuckle. "And I'm here to fuck..."
The Bride looked back at Buck, and her eyes darkened with withheld anger. "You're name is Buck, right?" She asked quietly. The sprawling man gave something which looked like a nod. "And you came here to fuck." She leaned over him and glared. "Right?" The man began to panic, trying to make an excuse, and that was all the Bride needed.
The door slammed again, shattering his neck in two. His feet jerked in a death rattle, and the Bride levered herself off of the floor. She looked down the corridor. Nobody had seen her. Good. A quick pick-pocketing later, and a set of car keys were in her hand. She looked at the key ring, and a look of disbelief crossed her face. "`Pussy Wagon?'" She read out loud, and then turned to the corpse. "You fucker..." The door slammed on the corpse's neck, breaking it again. The Bride caught her breath, thinking for a while on what to do next.
The elevator doors opened with a pleasant chime and the Bride rolled out on a wheelchair, dressed in the blue scrubs of - the thankfully late - Buck. he forced the wheels to move faster, but her head was spinning. There were hundreds of cars here. "Huntsville, Texas... okay..." he repeated it over and over, looking for the car. At least a dozen were from Texas. Which one was i- She stopped the wheelchair with a jerk at the sight before her, then sat back, a look of disgust on her face.
In front of her was the most distastefully yellow, ugliest looking car she had ever laid her eyes upon. And on the back, in neon-pink letters; `Pussy Wagon.' She sighed, and took out the key ring. The lettering was exactly the same. She smiled briefly. At least this was easier then she could have hoped for...
The door to the truck opened widely, scraping into the next car. The Bride wheeled the chair as far as it could go, then slowly began pushing herself off of the chair. The wheels wobbled violently, nearly throwing her onto the tarmac- She half-jumped half-fell into the truck, grabbing onto the red-leather headrest of the driver's seat. The wheelchair rolled away with a crash, and the Bride fell onto the back seats. Her feet still hung out of the door.
Grunting and grumbling, she grabbed the nearest handles she could reach, and pulled. Her body moved about two inches. Again she pulled, until it felt as if she was dislocating her arms. Her feet caught on the edge of the seat. One more time, sweat running down her face, and they fell in. She lent back against the door, trying to catch her breath, sweat running into her eyes, rubbing them red-raw. She waited for a bit, then reached over quickly and shut the door.
The windows thankfully were tinted, so she was safe, for now. She reached over, trying to rub some life into her legs, as if they had just fallen asleep, then tried to pull her knees up. She would have had more success trying to have gone back in time to save Kennedy. Her legs refused to answer. She rubbed them again, then attempted to move them.
Nothing happened. She looked down at her legs steadily, and then calmed herself, taking a few gulps of air. "Wiggle your big toe." Even her toes refused to obey her. "Wiggle your big toe." They were as unresponsive as the first time. She tented her fingers, and pulled a wry face. This could take some time...
"Wiggle your big toe." She repeated again. "Wiggle your big toe." Nothing. "Wiggle your big toe..." As I lay in the back of Buck's truck, trying to will my limbs out of entropy... "Wiggle your big toe..." I could see the faces of the cunts who did this to me. And the dicks responsible. Members all of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad.
All of their hated faces, Vernita, Elle, O-Ren and Budd swam into her view, standing over her beaten body, some remorseful, some gloating, but all victorious...
When fortune smiles on something as violent as revenge, it seems proof like no other, that not only does God exist, you're doing his will. One of the faces swam back into view. A small, round face with almond skin dotted faintly with freckles, black eyes and curled, black hair. 
At a time when I knew least about my enemies, the first name on my death list, O-Ren Ishii, was the easiest to find. But of course, when one manages the difficult task of becoming Queen of the Tokyo underground, one doesn't keep it a secret, does one?