you're too young & eager to love

Okay, I am going to attempt to write at least one thing every day. Even if it's just a paragraph. Because I like jumping on my wife's bandwagon.

For today, I present more O-Ren. Pre-movies. It just ends. I wanted to do commentary about the gang from her perspective, though I don't know how much commentary there actually is. My tenses jump all over the place.



-


Before she was The Bride, Beatrix called you O. Like the quick, sweet pop of sugared gum. She’d say it with a smile, her blonde hair falling loose from its elastic band. She was kind, kinder than you, less forged. Her determination always amplified her skill, you found, and you faulted her for that.

“Skill should be constant. A current of electricity.” You tell her over breakfast, eating the pink flesh of a grapefruit. Beatrix eats a bowl of cereal, crunching loudly, and you think of Japanese warhorses made docile by oats.

“Emotions can be a powerful motivator.”

“Silly rabbit.” You chide, not without respect.

Later, you teach her the proper etiquette of eating with chopsticks. The placement between the thumb and fingers, how the wooden tools are extensions of your hands. “The right hand,” you correct, “traditionally.” Beatrix switches her hold, and you give her a bowl of clumped rice.


-


Bill speaks many languages without explaining why. Yet he asks (in his ordering way) to teach Beatrix Japanese. In order to further your patience, you imagine, although you are the calm of mountains. More practiced in the art of waiting.

Every time she makes an error with subject-verb agreement or stumbles over the pronunciation, you rap her on the knuckles with an aritsugu knife. She learns quickly while Elle stretches herself against the wall, smoking cigarettes that make your nose curl. Elle is uninterested in the learning, more drawn to the scent of blood. When she interrupts for the third time, sarcastic steel sharp, you throw the blade so smoothly that it makes no noise before hitting the wall behind Elle’s leaning frame.

The blonde’s shoulders twitch; she glances at the knife, tears it free and picks beneath her nails with it.

“Your cheek, Elle.” Beatrix comments evenly while you consider whether or not she’s ready for the negative past tense structure.

Elle touches her face, the blood a thin line that will heal nicely, without a scar. A hint of surprise. She has enough sense to realize that you could have aimed better, harder, but she scoffs with laughter. The type that simmers with anger. She isn’t a woman that enjoys being bested or made an example of, though you calmly explained once that Bill has only ever made an example of them all.


-

Bill recruits you the way he recruits everyone.

You are more intrigued than thankful.

Later, you will respect him more than any man. He who took what you naturally possessed and molded it into greatness. Who showed you the power needed to control. When you have seized claim over the Tokyo underground, you will invite him to the celebration. He will decline but you’ll wake three mornings later to find a katana engraved, newly created, and lacking a note by the bed.


-


Budd and you were strangers, mostly. Created by years of being equally disinterested in each other.

Except he told you once, his eyes on your face, that he always had a thing for Asian women. You told him he reminded you of snake venom and American whiskey, and then you drank a glass of warmed sake while he sipped his beer.


-


Vernita talks of children. She mentions marriage, and you find her to be the weakest. Worse, even, than Budd – he’s merely struggling beneath the burden of his brother’s immensity. Vernita wants a life, one that could not involve blood except in birth.

Decorating the shape of your eyes in liquid black, pressed forward near a mirror, you stay silent. You do not want a child; you need no heir. Your future is tinged red and ornamented in ceremonial silks. You measure your worth by the precision of your samurai sword - not by the stretch of womb inside your body.


-


You are too aware of yourself to be sexual. The thrill of desire in your pulse is seldom. The kill satisfies. So, when Bill tells you that your mouth must feel like bone you are briefly surprised. A fluster of sensation in your chest before the temperate tide inside of you continues, washing away a suggestion that you aren’t sure existed.

Vernita is looking for a cage. Budd is open and forward about his conquers. Beatrix and Bill are becoming the same entity, you think. You watch the shiver of her spine when he moves aside her hair, all the while speaking about the assassination of great historical men. Elle’s heat bursts from her, though she is more than half a room away, smoking on the patio, alone in the night like a wolf. She has sharp eyes, and they focus on Bill heavily, so often that you wonder if Elle sees more than her desire and her jealousy. If her gleeful sadism might be turning into masochism.