Everything Old is New Again
Chapter One: Bloody Reflections in Mirrors
I slam back against the wall, blood spraying across my face. Where once there had been fire and noise, now the world seems to go quiet. The snow falls gently around me, the passion that had filled it moments ago seems to have now died. Died and gone quiet...like everything else. I lower my arm, the still smoking .45 slips out of my numb fingers to clatter onto the icy pavement. This one final death being the finishing piece of the whole nasty mess. It's all over now, it's all finished.
Now I can rest.
Oh yeah, I suppose I'm doing this wrong, aren't I? You probably don't really understand what I'm on about. My fault really, I should have started at the beginning. I could do it like David Copperfield, I was born, I grew up. But I suppose what you really want to know is how I got into the mess I did. Well, that part of the story would really start a few nights before this. I'd just gotten back to the States, my mother had sent me overseas to check on a few investments we had there...
"And I don't care what you have to do. If you have to go down there and rip his goddamn liver out to get him to pay, then do it!"
I switch off the phone and slip it back under my black trench coat. One last piece of business finished. Now I could rest, my work done. I run a hand across my tangled blonde hair and try to push it back into an organized swirl. Mother so hates it when I allow myself to appear less then organized. Can I help it if all my talents are in other fields? I turn back to the window, my face slightly reflected on the darkend glass.
New York City. The Rotten Apple. Crown jewel of the decadence and filth that was slowly consuming America. I was in the back of my limousine, having just been picked up from the airport. Suba was driving, the large Negro had worked for my mother for many years. He never said anything, but she knew he could be trusted. That's why he was the one she chose to pick me up. Mom was smart, she wasn't going to let anything happen to her heir apparent.
She'd been grooming me for years. I'd been given all the best schools. I'd been tutored and instructed in dozens of esoteric arts and languages. Mom wanted me to be a true and educated gentlemen. A lord to take over her empire when she finally gave in to death. Not that I expected the old battle-axe to ever die...death was too scared to take her.
I'd been over in Europe. The old Mafioso hadn't quite learned that the times were changing. They'd been holding to their old ways and not letting us do our business. That had been bad. So Mommy packed me up and sent me over to teach them a little lesson in respect. It had been a bloody and unpleasant time. So that as I sat there in the limo and looked out the window at the dark and dirty streets, it actually felt good to be home.
That's when the darkness was suddenly washed aside by leaping flashes of orange light. Bright flashes of red and blue slashed through it, the gleaming twirls of police lights. Suba stopped the car as I looked out the window. The building looked like it'd been through a war. The police were out in swarms, storming around and acting as though they ran these streets. The helicopter was down. It lay in a burning wreck in the middle of the street. It's shattered and bent frame looking like the twisted and burnt body of some dead animal.
Suba opened my door and I stepped out into the bitterly chill night air. The cold wind cutting through me as though my long black coat meant nothing. The cold seemed to soak into me as I stood there looking at the burning chopper...and at the bodies being dragged out of it. One body in particular. No...it couldn't be.
It felt like the world around me shattered like a broken mirror. The shards flew about me, sharp cutting things with frozen moments of my life still showing upon them. The shards cut me...my blood coating over the memories and hiding them under a crimson smear. The bloody images all crumbled away, leaving me in the cold darkness.
No. Not her. It couldn't be.
I felt numb. I felt colder then I ever have before. The wind slashed through me like a knife, bleeding away my insides. Leaving nothing behind but hardened frost. I almost cried then, cried like I hadn't cried since I was but a boy in her arms. But I couldn't cry. The biting cold lashed at my tears and froze them upon my face. Small silver spears of ice...aimed at my heart.
No. It couldn't be her...not her.
Then I see my answer. I see my damnation. A lone figure standing in the crowd yet not appearing part of it. The man with one eye. Woden. He sees me then, his good eye glinting with knowledge and power. The edges of his mouth slowly lift up, a smile sprawling across his narrow face. Woden, he would have done it. Somehow he had managed to beat her. I turn away then, turn away from that mocking smile. I return to the dark sanctuary of my limousine. Suba closes the door, understanding that I need to be alone. Alone to think and plan for one thing...
Revenge.
The motel is a dead place. Only the desperate and forsaken come here. I'm both. Suba waits quietly in the corner. He stands at strict attention, his hat tucked under his arm. His bald head shines slightly in the flickering light from the one bulb that lights the room. I sit on the bed, ignoring the stains and dust. I carefully watch the news program as the announcer turns to the side and grabs an offered piece of paper.
"This just in," she says quickly. Her voice hissing and static filled. "The man the police took into custody has now indeed been confirmed as former criminal enforcer of the Punchinello crime family, Max Payne. As you know, Max Payne has been waging a one man war on the streets of New York tonight, with a body count of horrendous proportions."
Max Payne. A dirty and smudged photograph is plastered across the screen. He stares out at me with dead eyes. The eyes of a man with nothing left to live for. I look back at them, memorizing that face though I knew it was already burnt into my memory. Max Payne...murderer of my mother.
"Though he said he could offer no official comment, Chief Jim Bravura seemed confident that they had indeed caught the right man. In related news the Aesir corporation has nominated a new executive president, Mr. Alfred Woden. When asked to comment he had this to say."
"...understand the horrors that have happened here." The picture blurs as Woden's image suddenly fills the screen. His one eye looking out at me with a mocking glare. "However, blood begets blood. Let us not forget that we are human beings, and not confined to the base reactions of animals. I believe Mr. Payne is a poor unfortunate who has suffered much and lost his touch with reality. He is not to be hunted, he is to be helped."
I flip off the monitor. The lines being drawn clearly for me. Woden had planned it all. Max Payne had been his trigger man. I stand up from the bed, the rusting springs creaking in protest. I walk up to the dingy mirror in the bathroom and look at myself there. Just a young woman with a unremarkable face. But now I have those eyes, the eyes that Max Payne had. The eyes of the dead. I scream as I lash out and punch the mirror, glass splitting and cracking even as it cuts into my flesh. Suba shifts slightly, worried for my well being.
"It's fine," I tell him softly. "Just a test. Tell me, is pain bad?" Suba looks at me, his dark eyes carefully watching my face. I wonder what he sees there? "Don't let anyone fool you, my friend. The pain is good. It reminds you that you're still alive."
Suba nods slightly. I look back at myself in the cracked mirror. The eyes seem to look back and through me again, as though the reflection were real, and I was the illusion. Woden thought he could screw with me. Could kill Mom and get away with it. But that wasn't the way this was going to end, not by a long shot. I turn to the bed and grab my case of luggage. I pop it open and dig through the clothes, mindless of the bloodstains I was marking them with.
Then I find them. Resting there in the bottom of the case. I reach down and pick up one of the .45s. The cold hard metal seeming to almost burn me. It was like frozen fire. The icy creation of my cold anger given form. The blood dripped from my hand and coated the handle. I didn't care. It was time to take care of the family business one last time. I was going to turn the snows red with blood for what they had done. Woden was a dead man, and so was Max Payne...