I should really try working on my other fictions. Le sigh. And not writing unless I'm sober. Which I'm not.
This was no Valhalla. Pain is a sure sign that you're still alive because immortal heroes don't suffer pain.
Light would come and go, blinding me when I had the strength to crack open my good eye. Useless fucking mediocre body. Useless Nux. Useless everything.
There was someone there, hovering near me and chattering excitedly. Nux? No. The voice was off and the hands that touched me weren't right.
"Yes? No? Come on Ducky, take a drink. Dune knows you're still in there." It definitely wasn't Nux.
Although I wanted to crush the traitor filth's windpipe and watch him suffocate, the fact that he wasn't the one looking after me left an anxious feeling in my head. I wasn't afraid. No, War Boys are never afraid. Except when everything hurts and they know for sure that the gates are closed to them. Maybe I was afraid then.
Aqua-cola would come just about as often as I could wheeze for it. Somebody's hands would pick up my head and pour it in. I'd choke it back up more often than not but there came no scorn for wasting precious mouthfuls.
The hands would roll me over onto my right side after I drank and then start peeling me like an onion from the immortal's gardens. It felt like I'd had to endure this a hundred times. I'd do things without meaning to, like screaming, crying, begging for my driver to come help me. Half the time I'd piss myself while this happened. If that wasn't humiliating enough, the lunatic who had jailed me away from Valhalla would just croon softly and clean me up like some pup that hadn't learned to walk yet.
Nux had better be fucking dead if he wasn't here to fix this nightmare, he should be the one cleaning up piss and blood and listening to me curse him. He was filth, piss and shit filth but I needed the scrawny bastard more than I was willing to admit. It felt real rusty to wish a betrayer could come rescue me.
"There, there. Lets get you cleaned up and put on the salve so we can wrap you up again. Yeah? Then Dune thinks you'll be ready for some maggots in your belly. Won't that be nice? Delicacy of the wastelands." The creature cackled at its own words.
Time passed, days maybe. Sometimes I'd be able to open my eyes and see the blur of the creature moving back and forth by the light of a torch but never for long. Sleep would steal away what little strength I had left and leave me prone to my captor's half-assed care.
I'm not sure how long I was there before I could turn my head and actually see the scavenger milling about in this rusthole it lived in. I watched it crawl up a tangle of rock and scrap metal toward a place in the darkness, tilting up its chin and opening its mouth like the wretched do when Immortan Joe gives them aqua-cola.
This place was a cave, the walls were crying aqua-cola only in that one spot where the loon waited eagerly for drops to fall onto it's tongue.
It was naked. Covered in scales with teeth like a row of knives. Fear gripped me but yet again so did the exhaustion. I was asleep before I even had the chance to make my horror known. That night I began to dream again. The first dream I'd had in I don't know how long was of a half woman, half goanna. The monster mauled my driver inside our Coupe while I pounded on the glass with my fist.
The next day was different. I watched the scavenger dress herself in layers of hole riddled cloth and I had the sense to understand that she didn't have scales. They were old scars made with fire. The teeth hadn't been imagined. They really were yellowed daggers hidden behind an unsettling smile.
"You look bettah! None of that far away look in your eyes. You thirsty Ducky?"
I'd heard that word so many times that for a moment I wondered if Ducky was really my name. So soft, so rust and lame. That name made me want to spit. Thank V8 that I remembered in time to growl it like a curse. "Slit."
"Eh?" The scaly witch tilted her head of matted brown tendrils and swiped her tongue over her lips.
"My fucking name. It's Slit. Slit."
The scav snorted. "That's a fitting name. But Dune wonders what your name was before you had such a fucked up face?"
I chewed on the lumps of scar tissue inside my cheek. If I could move, I'd have strangled the wench for that question.
Dune fed me a handful of maggots. They wriggled and squirmed their way out of the parts of my face that never sealed back together quite right. I spat as many of them back as I could but It wasn't the first time I'd been force fed like this. I knew the scavenger wouldn't take no for an answer.
"If you eat, you'll feel better my Ducky."
"Slit."
"Ducky."
"Slit"
"What's your real name mate?"
"No one named me!"
No one named me. Not the bitch who thrust me into the lift guardians hands when I was too small to remember, not the other pups in the litter I slept in as a child, not even Nux. I made my own name and only after that son of a whore Imperator carved my face up.
The scav nodded, not at all offended that I had snarled my words at her. "I see. I am Dune."
"I figured that." The loon talked in the third person so it wasn't at all hard to guess her name. I found the fact that she thought to introduce herself despite this quirk horribly irritating.
There was a long silence, then the daily ritual began again. "Dune has to change your dressings."
"I hate you!" I shrieked. Why wouldn't this mad creature let me die already? I felt dead, mostly. She just hummed at me.
"I hate Dune too. A rotten bitch ain't she?"
I could sense the sarcasm. She pushed me over onto the side that hurt less and started the process of peeling off all of the rags she'd tied around my ruined corpus. I had been so shiny, so chrome before. Now what was I?
"Ahh! Fuck! Can't you do this any less mediocre!?"
Dune scoffed. "Everything outside of the womb hurts. Be still. Dune was impressed that you're willing to talk already. It's only been eight days. Don't make her regret dragging you home."
"You fucking should regret! I'll make you regret!"
Like always came the pain, the sobs, the humiliation but until this time I never had enough awareness to remember being cared for after the peeling and unpleasant cleaning. Dune would coat her hands in this slime from a leather pouch on her belt, then smooth it over where I had no skin left to protect me. It felt good. It was the only thing that felt okay in this evil place.
I stayed awake long enough to watch the wrappings (stained rags) be scrubbed clean in carefully collected water in the bottom of a patch-work basin. They were hung to dry. More salve was layered onto me with careful hands and finally I was wrapped up once more. I was reminded of how Nux had looked after me that time I got sliced up in the gut, and it hurt somehow to remember the filth fondly.
"Sleep Ducky. It's been a hard day."
