Sounds of Silence
Sounds of Silence
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normal;text-decoration:none;text-underline:none\'>Disclaimer: Vicious and Cowboy
Bebop belongs to their fine creators and I wouldn’t dream of stealing
them. (Well, I might try to steal Spike
or Vicious but I’d bring them back when I’d had my way—I mean, finished playing
with—hell, I’d return them in good time.)
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normal;text-decoration:none;text-underline:none\'>Author’s note
Vicious has no history. In the show, we
know nothing about him except his relationship to Spike and the few hints we
get from The Real Folk Blues series finale. So…I made a history for
him. I basically asked myself what
would turn a man into a psychotic murderer of Vicious’s character, and how did
he possess the strength not to go completely over the edge?
relationship to Spike and Julia…that’s been done.yes\"> This is all Vicious, all the time, because I find him fascinating
and a great, deep character—not to mention very, very handsome
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Wingdings;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none;text-underline:none\'>
so I think it’s not as good as my others…but I’ll let you be the judge of that
;).
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normal;text-decoration:none;text-underline:none\'>Spoilers
ones for Ballad of Fallen Angels, which is the last episode of Season 1,
if you didn’t know. Other than that,
nothing.
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normal;text-decoration:none;text-underline:none\'>Archiving
Absolutely, just let me know where it’s going please.yes\"> Email is
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normal;text-decoration:none;text-underline:none\'>Rating
R for language and mature themes. Parts
of this story will bother people. If
you’re against the F-word, child abuse or prostitution don’t read it.
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normal;text-decoration:none;text-underline:none\'>Feedback
don’t review I’m going to stick my head in the oven and then throw myself out
the window.
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normal;text-decoration:none;text-underline:none\'>Other stuff
used at the beginning is ‘Sound of Silence’, writing and performed by Paul
Simon on his album Wednesday Morning 3 a.m.
It’s Paul Simon’s song and I’m just borrowing it for atmosphere, not
trying to leech royalties or anything, ‘kay?
I think it fits Vicious perfectly.
And it’s the theme of my story.
God, I’m such an English teacher wanna-be.yes\"> The “See You Space Cowboy”-space quote at the end is by a
musician named Placido Domingo. The
chatter is stopping now, and the story is commencing.yes\"> I hope you enjoy it.
normal;text-decoration:none;text-undee:noe:none\'>yes\">
SOUNDS OF SILENCE
A Story of Vicious
Hello darkness, my old friend,
I\'ve come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping,
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence
In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone,
\'Neath the halo of a street lamp,
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence
And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more.
People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening,
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dare
Disturb the sound of silence
Fools, said I, You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows.
Hear my words that I might teach you,
Take my arms that I might reach you
But my words like silent raindrops fell,
And echoed
In the wells of silence
And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made.
And the sign flashed out its warning,
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said, The words of the prophets
are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls
And whisper\'d in toundounds of silence
to wonder how it came to this, I really do.
How people live who I thought dead and how people hate who I thought
friends. I have to wonder at the life that
has led me here, and the life that will possibly end here.
a small measure of concern for. I feel
nothing for it, I have decided. Voices
are just sounds. Gunshots wipe them
out. I draw my blade, making the same
sound I’ve madthouthousand times before.
I cease to think or feel, and cease to care if life or death takes place
here today. It will not be my death.
It will not
be my concern.
I die, I will be buried in a hillside cemetery overlooking a freeway and the
skyscrapers of Mars. My coffin will be
placed in the soft red earth under a spreading tree that predates both the
freeway and the cemetery. When I die,
no one will weep for me. I cannot abide
the sound of weeping. It brings back
too much. I feel quite certain that no
one will come to mourn me. I do not
deserve mourning. I understand that,
and I accept it. When I die, my death
will very likely be violent and senseless.
When I die there will be no sounds of friends and loved ones talking in
hushed voices, no one asking why or thinking how it was such a shame.
was born with white hair. My mother was
a hefty consumer of a diuretic drug that leeches iron from the body.
translucent blue-eyed child to two dark and incepting parents.
right.
My earliest
memories are of a house. Not a house,
but the green space behind it. A tiny
white-picket house nestled between apartment projects, backed up to the blast
field of a spaceport of Mars. The house
did not belong to my strung-out druggie mother but to my maternal
grandmother. She was a small
eggshell-thin woman, not right in the head.
She was a child, suited to taking care of one.yes\"> The sounds were her small voice, a treble, singing songs in a
language of her own making. This
singing rarely stopped. I do not
remember being bothered by it. I did
not know any wrongness to the songs she sang.
I think I rather enjoyed them.
Often, the songs were overtaken by the rumble of starship engines making
use of the blast field that stood just beyond the boundaries of my world.
foundation. I had a variety of
playthings that lived in the yard and they would dance away from me crazily as
the earth moved beneath my feet. I was
delighted. When starships landed, my
grandmother would hide under her round kitchen table, beneath a thinning
tablecloth printed with blue flowers on a pink background, and cry.
father and mother did not make an appearance in my life for what I suppose was
years, except for occasional visits from my mother, who would weep and whimper
nonstop and hug me too tightly while my grandmother flitted in the background
and sang furious anthems at the tempo of a speed metal band, and the
semi-annual return of my father. He
always smelled of what I have come to know as peppermint schnapps cut with pure
grain alcohol and marijuana. His voice
would rumble out of his chest at my grandmother while he held my head against
him like it was a basketball that had a tendency to bounce wildly out of
control. When he had reduced my
grandmother to cowering against a wall, clawing at the curtains made from the
same material as her safety table cloth, he would shove my head rudely away and
strike me a few times. Once he drew
blood from my nose and I was quite surprised to see that it was red, not blue
as in my veins. His slaps on my face
were always overly sharp and hurt my ears.
From my expert perspective in the present moment, he hit like a drunken
fourteen--old-old whore spanking her sugar daddy.yes\"> But I was a boy. Slaps
were slaps.
He spoke to
me, sometimes. He had to be in a fairly
advanced state of intoxication to actually lower himself to talk to me.
out of his mouth when he did. Freak.
Cocksucker. Ugly motherfucking
joke. Mother fucked a fucking albino
circus midget and look what I go stuck with.
I attribute my later quickness with language to him.
continued on for a time. Already I was
becoming detached. Parental visits were
a chance for study of the two larger halves of myself.
for boyhood pursuits, all of which blur together into intricate play by myself
in the impossibly green yard, watching spaceships from a prone position while I
chewed on my grandmother’s outrageous homemade taffy, and looking through the
fence in interest when gang members shot one another in the apartments next
door. Childhood is never remembered
accurately, because it is an idyllic period of rest for the mind, while inside
adulthood evolves and shapes itself against the battery of outside influences
innocent children are unaware they are soaking in.yes\"> The ugly mutation bursts forth and takes command of all stations
at various times for everyone. I know
mine came exceptionally early. This was
due mostly to a dion ion of my pater familias.yes\">
He arrived
in a broken down car. It had
wheels. The engine didn’t sound like an
engine. It clattered along the street,
as if it was going to drop out of the chassis at any moment, and when shut off
gave a bang louder than the small-caliber weapons of our neighbors.
“What’s
this?” he demanded as he hauled my grandmother onto the front porch by her
housedress. He was brandishing a letter
in her shaky hand.
“Na,
la,” she trilled before answering.
“I told you. Too much, too much
money.”
“Fucking a
right you told me,” my father replied.
“What is this bullshit you’re trying to pull, Laverne?”
“Shine,
la non,” she said in an operatic fashion.
“The baby eats too much. The
baby is too big. The baby makes me
spend things.” She always referred to
money, be it credit-cash cards, oolong or uncut diamonds as things.
“No!” said
my father in broad, vaudeville shock.
He slammed the woman into the doorframe.yes\"> “I get that you’re broke and can’t feed the kid no more.
fucking nerve to send me this fucking handwritten dear Abby bullshit and
suggest I take the goddamn brat back in like I was a fucking orphanage.”
“Your baby,
you spend,” said my grandmother rather matter-of-factly.
“Like
hell,” said my father, and spat on her.
He crumpled the letter and dropped it on her worn out slippers.
advanced into the house, grabbed me by the arm and hauled me into my
bedroom. “Pack your shit, junior.
have already surmised I did not go to a happy homecoming.
from the first terraformers who were mostly convicts that landed here to make
the place habitable. The sounds of the
street where I was landed were cars causing greenish-brow shit, vomit and
piss-filled water to slosh into gutters choked with garbage.
home, the home I had been sold to, screaming in his native language at a
kitchen girl. They were doors slamming
and women crying. I didn’t hear the
clackety engine of my father’s car again.
In point of fact, I never heard from my parents again, period.
details are appreciated, but I reserve the right to use discretion.
this period would simply become a shameless prick tease.
in my new home were often titillated as well.
Yes, to be sterile and matter of fact about the whole thing, I was a
handsome, eerie child. I lived in a
room with eight other equally handsome boys and at night, when the sounds of my
home and my street changed from sobs, screams and pain-sounds, each of which I
memorized and wove into the fabric of my existence, to the drunken
pleasure-sounds of wealthy patrons who could not see the peeling paint, the
smeared shit and the servicing woman’s black eye through her heavy makeup—at
night I performed a variety of unspeakable anatomical acts for a variety of
people, the majority of whom I sincerely hope are roasting in the most
exquisite sort of hell Dante ever dreamt of.
I matured
in my new home. I was not fed well and
consequently cannot keep any weight on even now, when I can feed like an
Orwellian pig at trough. As I began to
age and my l beg began to extend, my eyes to harden and my face to lose its
youthful beauty and I suppose ability to arouse excitement in clients, I was
relegated more and more to the kitchen under the Belgian and his
ex-kitchen-girl wife, who always seemed to be pregnant, drunk and screaming
over the sizzling sounds of meat and vegetables.yes\"> I scrubbed up grease, blood and dropped food waste, dipping my
hands into a wooden bucket of water so hot that they gave off just the faintest
sizzle. I would often play when bored,
seeing how long I could hold them in and how loud that sizzle would become.
after hours, he caught me at my game.
He stared at me for a long moment and I suppose I stared back.
time and examined the two fresh blisters popping out.yes\"> He murmured something, his belly quivering.
still quaking and quing ang and muttering.
The beatings ceased. I wonder if
it was out of some silly civilized fear of the ancient art of self-inflicted
pain, or more probably because heply ply realized that hitting me on the back
with a broomstick a few times wasn’t really very effective by comparison.
evening two well-dressed gentlemen came into my home.yes\"> They arrived in a hovercraft.
It made a whooshing sound, like a winter wind trying to pry the house
apart. One man was old and obese, the
very cliché of most of our customers.
The other was small and light, with a crinkled face like a Shar-Pei
dog. His eyes were quick and black
under the folds of his brow. This man
made no sounds. It was why I noticed
him.
Later on,
there was shooting. I had never been
close to gunfire, and while I was no stranger to it I stopped my scrubbing to
watch. Several other well-dressed men
were shooting at the fat man. The
dog-man with the silence and the quick eyes was shooting back, shielding the
fat man rather comically with his comparably tiny frame.
pistol out of his stained apron and aim at the dog-man’s back.
duties, took up a paring knife and jammed it into the Belgian’s back between
his second and third rib. The sound was
sucking, low and wet, as a fat man tried to breath through a punctured
lung. After seeing the Belgian carve up
thousands of chickens, such a well-placed jab was second nature.
The second
group of well-dressed men shot at me then.
I fell over and spilled my mopping bucket all over the floor.
soaked my hair dark gray. Blood (from me)
added to the mixture and made me nearly a brunette.yes\"> The don can came after a time and stood over me.
I told him,
and he shook his head once. “No.
looked at it. “You like the blades,
huh?” I think I managed to nod before I
passed out.
name was Mao Yenrai, and he was a bodyguard and assassin for the Red Dragon
syndicate, under the fat man whose life I had narrowly saved.
in the syndicate as ‘The Buddha’. He
really was exceptionally obese, and wheezed when he walked.
leather of his abused footwear and that constant, desperate wheezing.
head madam of the house, and found to my surprise that I was in her bedroom, in
her bed, in a clean bathrobe with my shoulder bandaged.
downstairs. I had been purchased, she
said with a leer, by one of her best customers, and she hoped that I had a gay
old time being his personal toy, no pun intended.yes\"> I made up my mind then I was going to bolt.
make it on the streets of Mars with relative ease.yes\"> I determined that I would never again be violated in body or
spirit by anyone. I put the sum total
of my life into a greasy paper bag and went to the battered chest of drawers at
the end of the boy’s sleeping room. It
contained clothing and makeup for when one of our customers desired a boy who
didn’t look like a boy. I found a
chopstick used for binding up hair. It
was lacquered.It was sharp.
pairing knife, but it would draw blood.
I tucked it up my sleeve and went downstairs like a good little
boy.
was waiting by a limousine at the curb.
I was surprised to see him again, to say the least.
to my mind. Already, I was planning my
escape route. From running errands, I
knew the red light district like the back of my hand.yes\"> I could get away from a fat man and his traitorous underling who
last night had been the first one to treat me as human in my memory.
cease to exist in the form I did now.
“Are you deaf?” Mao asked, taking a step towards me.
didn’t mean it like that. Look,” he
took out a cigarette from his suit jacket and lit it in a practiced gesture
with a match against his thumbnail, “I’m not here to haul to off to be
somebody’s fuck toy, okay? Buying you
at your purchase price was the only way I could get that old bat in there to
let you come with us.” He exhaled and
looked me dead in the eye. I remember
feeling myself suspended, knowing that this moment was the be-all, end-all of
my life. I knew that what Mao said next
would change me, for better or for worse, forever.yes\"> “You saved my boss’s life last night,” Mao said.
we’re both grateful.” He flicked the
cigarette into the choked gutter, where it sizzled out.
didn’t blink. From a kid your age, that
takes something special. We can use
you.” He stepped back and opened the
limo door. I could see the silhouette
of the fat man inside. My insides
roiled with a thousand bad memories, but they already seemed so far away.
a few things. Think you wanna come on
boa
wheezing over the limousines almost soundless idle.yes\"> I knew I was going to say yes eons before it came out of my
mouth.
“Okay.”
the job done. Stay here in this place
until I was worn out and used up, one of the ghosts that haunted a tiny
upstairs room? Or go with the man who
looked like a dog and who’s mind seemed to work in the same strange way mine
did, and leave here forever.
Simple choice.
I left my childhood place I left everything behind, and I do mean everything,
from the bag of clothes I dropped on the curb to my name and my identity.
man, listening to Mao extol me in his raspy smoker’s voice with the hint of an
accent from his native Hong Kong, I felt myself melt away and a new voice being
inside my head. The voice was an almost
soundless whisper, but it told me such things.
Wonderful, terrible things that frightened me a great deal but excited
me more.
“This kid
is the one,” said Mao to the fat man.
“If he can do what he did last night on a regular basis, we might have a
real winner on our hands.” The fat man
nodded agreement. Tao didn’t talk much,
because his high-pitched voice embarrassed him.yes\"> Mao punched me on the arm with karate-hardened knuckles.
more. The first I had ever experienced.
Significance
can be found even in the smallest things.
that day to this there have been sounds in my life.yes\"> Too many to count, too thousands many.yes\"> I’ve heard screams and shots, heard blood spurt and the dying
moan. I’ve heard voices, including my
own. I’ve heard hope and pain and hate
and love and betrayal, and sometimes I wonde eve even back then there was
something, some indicator that led to this moment where the total of all I’ve
done would be staring at me, back from the dead.yes\"> Then my reflective second breaks and I lash out with my sword, a
Masamune blade, of course. It’s all
back to survival and surviving. The
sounds are a grunt of pain, not mine.
The sounds are breaking glass.
The sounds are a cold, barren wind whipping through the jagged opening a
man’s body has made. The sounds are a
high, light clink on the stone floor where I’m standing and my own gasp of
realization, cut short. The sound is an
explosion. The sound is oblivion.
The sound
is silence.
THE HIGH NOTE IS NOT THE ONLY THING…