I own nothing.
Better Selves
Wasteland
The wastes are endless. He knows that. Has always known. When it comes to empty, survival-fueled existence, nothing is so endless as the dark depths of his mind. He wouldn't expect the barren desert around him to be any less.
Where are you?
Where are you, Max?
Even amidst nothing, he's never alone. Ghosts dwell in those dark depths and when they surface, his world goes red and fills with screams.
Where are you?
Hells if he knows.
It's been months since he left the Citadel, disappearing in the crowd of creatures who held their eyes to the sky and screamed Furiosa name. Their faces float through his black matter even now. Their stifling need for something, someone to cling to they way babes cling to a mother. They need someone good, righteous and strong. Someone who will chase away the darkness and make their world real again. Someone like Furiosa. It's why he had to leave.
The real world is no place for a madman.
He shakes his head of the thought and calculates. Yes, it's been months. Even if time is thin with nothing but sand and miles behind, he knows he's gone farther than he has before, eating through his full tank of gas in a pattern of daylight and darkness. He's pleased with how long he can run with the dusty courser he took from the Citadel.
It's not so different from his V8, all smooth angles, sitting low to the ground. Simple, but efficient. It drives like an arrow through hot air, swift and comforting, though it lacks familiarity. He thought about going back, right after he left the towering home of the dead tyrant. To go back and search for the remains of his trusty vehicle. But even that attachment, long as it's existed, makes his skin itch.
Mostly, a part of him worries the Imperator or the wives, fragile but fearless, will come looking for him. It's a small part, a whisper in the back of his mind that tells him it's good to feel wanted, even if only for his ruthlessness. It's a whisper he hasn't heard in devil knows how long and it makes him devour the miles faster then he thought possible.
A pale girl, eyes like clear water, flashes before him in the flying desert. She screams. Blood pours from her mouth.
In a waterfall of red she disappears beneath his bumper.
He slams the car to a stop.
With his eyes closed the desert around him vanishes. If only the crumbled world in his brain would be so easily dismissed.
You didn't save us.
Why didn't you save us?
The voices beg for answers he stopped trying to give long ago.
Why, Max?
He opens his eyes and pounds a fist against the steering wheel. Revels in the pain that spreads through his hand. It's something solid he can grasp to. Real. More than nothingness and sand and horror filled voices.
Real, unlike the dark blob in the corner of his vision.
He turns, blinks. The spot sits in a haze of heat on the horizon beside him. It doesn't disappear. Not even while he waits, nothing but the scrape of scorching wind against his skin and the sizzle-pop of cooling metal in his ears. So he can only guess. Only hope.
The blob must be real, too.
Can't believe I'm posting this. I don't normally write narrative fiction and I've never written fanfiction (okay there was a Boondock Saints one-shot years ago) but the movie has me on a furious chrome high. Since I can't get back to my own writing until I work it out of my system, I figured I might as well get some feedback while I'm at it. So feel free to let me know that the story sucks. Because it probably does. Again, narrative fiction. Not my thing.