-Slit-
ONE
Ol' Cack was what they called him because he stunk like old cack. He was whooping and pounding his chest, just hamming it up to the crowd while I lay there face down in what could also possibly be old cack.
TWO
This wasn't going at all how I thought it would. Cack was a wretch, skinny, dried out, not that intimidating, right? Wrong. I didn't know the rules of this shack fighting bullshit. I knew fighting in the pits back home: no weapons and no pants because you can hide a weapon in your pants, and then you beat each other until somebody either gives up or can't fuckin' walk anymore. That wasn't how it was 'round the Shatterbone shacks. Down there, anything goes.
THREE
If Ol' Cack had a knife instead of a chair, I'd probably be laying on the ground bleeding out. All I had to be thankful for was that I'd had the good sense not to take off my pants for this.
FOUR
It wasn't like they were the real fighters, they were just the locals, and I was a War Boy. This should have been a sure thing!
FIVE
I could hear counting. Nux and I had watched long enough to know what that meant. If I didn't get up before the crowd counted to ten, that meant I was out. Done. The big loser.
SIX
Around me, I heard taunts from the other spectators, mostly about my face. Slizard was what the man organizing this decided to call me, which meant everyone was calling me that. Nux, at least, was still bellowing my name and slapping his palm against the boards encircling the ring, but his voice cut off abruptly as if somebody had physically put an end to his cheering for me off the floor.
SEVEN
I looked up toward where Nux had been among the spectators, expecting to see him being accosted by the wretched surrounding us. What I saw wasn't a wretch man-handling him, but invoked a rage that had festered like an infection under my scars for years. Bloodbag. The feral was pulling on Nux's sleeve, almost like he was trying to pull him away from the ring and abduct him, again.
EIGHT
The threat of losing wasn't what I needed to get back on my feet, apparently having violent flashbacks of a driver stealing one booted raging feral was. Cack looked surprised to see that I'd risen, as he should, he had wanged me pretty damn well with that old fold-out chair and looked to be moving in for another swing with it.
Rage makes you hard as steel. I was clapped over the left shoulder and the side of the head with the chair, and would feel that later on, but caught it around the edge of the backrest in my right, stronger hand. I have no idea what I did with the chair after I wrenched it from Cack's grip, or what happened to Cack for all that matter. It was just a blur of motion and anger from deep in my gut.
The people watching were roaring like a crowd twice the size, and I tasted blood, though I was uncertain why. I saw stars, vision funneled to focus directly on Bloodbag and nothing else as I dove over the wooden boards and scrap panels composing the ring. I was after the driver thief. I'd gone kamicrazy! Or Scav-frenzied? I didn't know or care which as I gripped the lapels of the bloodbag's jacket and began to drag him into the ring.
"Slit! No!" Nux screeched, pulling his bloodbag back with a grip around the back waistband of his pants with a foot braced against the outer wall of the ring. "Mate! Stop! Let go!"
Bloodbag shrieked, arms flailing, then finding purpose in trying to tear himself away, pushing against my shoulders as I snapped my teeth. I was going to rip his fucking jugular out for putting hands on Nux, for trying to take him away again!
ONE
They're counting again, why?
TWO
Bloodbag began pounding his fists against my head, but with the kamicrazy burning through me and without enough space to gain any real momentum with his swings, my grip hardly loosened. I didn't bite down on him around the blood gusher like I'd been aiming to, because he was wiggling around while Nux and I played tug-o-war with him. I got him at the bend of the elbow. Whatever, I'll take a chunk out where ever I could.
THREE
There was more force behind the action to pull Bloodbag back and out of my reach than there should be. Almost lost him once, but managed to keep dug in and got pulled out over the short walls of the ring with him. The spectators were trying to pull him back too.
FOUR
"FERAL FILTH! INFECTED 'IM WITH YOUR CRAZY BLOOD! YOU'RE WHY HE DIED," Nux wasn't dead and I knew this, I think I was half in today and half in last year.
FIVE
"HOLY MC'FUCKIN' V8, LET GO SLIT!" Nux roared.
SIX
Something crashed against the back of my good and metal leg, the surge of imagined flames licking up my stump jerked me out of the frenzy. I collapsed backward into a set of arms. They were thicker and stronger than any wretch, folding my own arms forward and pinning them to my chest in an inescapable squeeze.
The counting had stopped. Everyone was shouting, darting about as faces painted in red poured inside through the narrow doorway.
I twisted, trying to see behind me and up... And up... And up. Goofy ears and a blond stubbled chin. Jawbreaker.
Nux was fuming. He wouldn't look at me. I suppose this was sort of my fault since I said I could do it and win us buckets of cola, but he backed me up on it! Now he was over there, sitting between me and his bloodbag, as if he could in any way act as a shield if I decided to dive onto the feral-fuck and try beating the eyes from his skull. I just might, if he moves wrong or looks at Nux for too long. Bloodbag knew better. He kept his eyes fixed to the wall beyond the bars of the cramped cell we sat in.
Every once in a while I'd hear him mumble something unintelligible, and I'd also hear Nux grumble words that were perfectly intelligible.
"...tosser," he cursed.
"Aw, come the fuck off it, won, didn't I?" I retorted.
"Ohh, but I don't see any winnings, do you? Because you only got it up and knocked off Cack because he was in your way of killin' my mate here, and got us all ARRESTED!"
I was going to say something snappy, already had something slick in the tank to slap back with, but that word stopped me. Mate. Ugh, that was... Painful. The bloodbag is a mate of his?
I choked on the words I forgot, then chewed on the end of my tongue to hold back something worse. I forgot how easy it was to fight with Nux, how the reaction to his, honestly rightful, anger was to sling around more shit.
If I hadn't thrown a fit when I saw Bloodbag, nobody would have gotten the guards to keep me from tearing the Feral's head off. Apparently, shack fights are prohibited, but the rule isn't enforced unless you gave the guards a reason to bother, like say: attempting to corpse a prizefighter hired to one of the top clans.
Nux was right, I made the mess, but it was within my right to tell him why.
"I thought he was gonna steal you again!" I admitted after a moment, spitting over Nux's shoulder at the hairy shit.
Blood-sack flinched and cursed his weirdo speak. That got me slapped across the back of the head by my former driver, but it wasn't like Dune's slaps. Dune's slaps and pinches weren't meant to do any harm, they were just a warning that I was pushing my luck. When a War Boy slaps another War Boy, we aim to take off a layer of skin and leave bruises. Dune's warning slap was soft by comparison, almost playful, Nux's almost got him laid the hell out on reflex.
What stopped me was the sight of him shrinking back into Bloodbag as I lurched at him with a fist clenched and ready. It wasn't what I wanted, I didn't want him on the floor and bleeding, I didn't like seeing him jerk away like that with the expectation to experience my fist in his face or ribs. He knew the feeling of my blows well, and I knew the flare of rage boiling in my guts even better, but it went cold as frost quickly.
Fuck, this wasn't what I wanted anymore. The fight, his waterworks, and the carving that would follow to handle my anger and hurt, the thought of living that nightmare again sickened me as I pulled back and scooted on my palms and right heel to put some distance between us.
Now I was the one who couldn't look at him. I realized then that the feral wasn't to blame, Nux was never stolen, he ran away. I didn't blame him, I'd run from me too.
"This is why I didn't tell you he was here," I heard him grind out between pitiful sniffs.
"What?" I bit my tongue at my anger, but meant what I asked all the same.
Nux crossed his arms, scooting himself closer to his bloodbag mate.
"Knew you'd blow your head gasket and go kamicrazy on 'im. O'course you would. You'd feckin' corpse 'im even though he's our only real shot outta this rust pit, half the chance! 'Cause ya can't stand me even lookin' at anybody 'cept you! " he explained, jabbing a finger in my direction. Truthful brutality.
He felt what he'd said was true, and looking back, I think it was. I think I coveted Nux's attention, probably because, well, after Crank left the Citadel and fake died, I hated everyone except Nux, because Nux wouldn't leave, except he did. We've already established why he ran away, or parts of why. My gut-rope squeezed anxiously around the crumbs of tack I'd eaten this morning.
Bloodbag stole glances at us both and fidgeted about, pulling on his dust-coated beard and rocking his good knee a bit. Just how the fuck was he our shot out? Maybe he was one of the fighters hired by the house, heh, if he was competing in the House Wars, it was a lost cause.
I could never afford the spectator fee to go witness him, but Lighty Boy dominated in the arena and I, kind of, delighted in hearing about the absolute madman with a shit leg who sometimes landed on Wilson's table while we were at work or sent waves of maimed opponents for the old man to fix. The bum leg made him relatable to me I guess... Wait.
Bloodbag was squirming and sidling as close as he could to the locked door of the barred cell, I watched him work purposefully to move without tweaking his screwed up knee.
"HE'S Lightly Boy?!" I squawked, "how the hell long has- when- he's been here since day one!'
Bloodbag's shoulders hunched as he cringed. Nux hunched up too, but he bared his teeth with aggravation.
"Yes," was all he spat.
My brain was still digesting that, but figuring out other strange happenings too, and they all circled back to the bloodbag. Whenever we went to do extra work in the shantytown, we'd split off, and Nux would always get at least twice the tips I did. I'd thought it was because he was quick and friendly too, no... I was then certain he was just visiting Bloodbag, and Bloodbag was helping him out by sharing his arena winnings, because they were mates, right? Shit, Nux had been carefully avoiding me and Bloodbag ever being in the same room, because he couldn't trust me not to kill him.
In the first nights we spent at Wilson's after I came around, I had never spoken of the Road War without placing the blame squarely where I thought it should go, the feral universal donor who had complicated everything and tipped things in Furiosa's favor. No wonder he kept me from ever seeing or knowing of the feral freaker being here. Bloodbag was probably careful not to visit Wilson unless we were away at our regular job. Maybe he came looking around the shanties for Nux when he never showed up to visit. This was all just paranoid speculation, but it made sense.
Another realization, the prize for the champion of the House Wars was a car. If Bloodbag won...
Boots incoming, men were moving through the cell block. It was a guard, I think, but he wore a mane of gull feathers stained ochre red and his face was etched in age, one eye clouded over. A bare chest and shiny chrome cone thingies with dangling baubles over his nipples. He also had on a kind of kilt made from strips of fine leathers. I spied what I thought was an embellishment of the leather at first, no, a tattoo. Human leather. Nice polished boots, which was a big tell about rank.
This wasn't a guard, it was Chuck, leader of the House we, Wilson, and Jaw worked for. He's the one Wilson called Caligula. He's the head of the House currently in dominance, which was also the House that trains and commands the city guards.
Jaw shuffled along into my line of sight now with a few lower-ranking guards. He looked pissed.
A snap of Caligula's fingers and the doors opened, two guards shouldered their way in through the narrow doorway and commanded Bloodbag out. He argued in clipped mutters.
"Wait, them?" he asked urgently, crazy eyes darting our way with an accompanying twitch of his hand toward us as the guards loomed.
He looked to Jaw, who avoided eye contact and simply shook his head.
The guards then started ushering him out, herding him along with their mass and cautious nudges. He jerked at every point of contact and tried to turn once toward Nux, but was shoved.
"Hey HEY!" there was a physical altercation happening just outside as he was removed. You could hardly understand his grunts and disjointed rambling, but he wasn't wanting to leave without Nux specifically.
Only Jaw and one lowly guard were left in the cell with Nux and I as the door was pulled shut with a clank. Nux flinched at the noise and gasped before choking on what I'd wager was the waterworks I had been expecting.
Jaw did not move. He stood there with crossed arms and eyes burning at the floor to the right of me under a harsh brow.
"I can't spring you out," he growled over the ruckus of the Feral losing it.
"But you're-" Nux started only to be cut off.
"I'm a washed-up fighter, I have nothing to offer anyone to get you two out," he huffed. The vein in his temple was bulging, and his left fist was clenched.
"So we're gonna rot in here, s'that it?" I snapped, still heated from what was said in this cell before they came for the only one in it of any value to the ruling clan.
I was lifted, slammed to the bars before I knew what had happened. Jaw had moved like lightning in his anger, took me by the collar and yanked me off my ass as if I weighed no more than a pup.
"NO. The punishment for illegal gambling is a MONTH as a slave fighter! No pay! no benefits! In the deathmatches, you get out IF you survive!" He roared, breath hot on my dazed face, "...and I'm powerless to save my sister's dip-shit boyfriend and his skinny friend from it!"
"Sister's boyfriend?" Nux croaked through a sob, confusion and terror bled into his strained voice, nevermind that. Jaw was probably going to murder me for the satisfaction of it.
I struggled to breathe, the wind knocked out of me and back aching, but also realizing the reality of it all. Nux, he was a dead man. There was no chance of his survival in the ring, fuck-off slim for me too. Desperate, and trying to bargain with nothing, I pled.
"W-wait! I- I'll do two months! I'll do his month too! Fuck, just not him, he can't!"
Jaw snarled, grinding his nose and forehead into mine.
"I don't get to make those decisions, Slit! I could forkin' throttle you!"
"Hold it," said the voice of total authority in the room, Chuck, "that's not a bad hook, I'm feeling romantic, let Blue Eyes out. Even if the lizard man carks it, a sacrifice for a good mate arouses the spectators' feel cavities, and it would soothe down our would-be champion. I see nothing but net."
I could barely understand the bizarre marriage of foreign vernacular and weirdly pretty words coming out of Caligula's mouth. All I heard was the man in charge order Nux's release. It happened weirdly, my head was spinning, everything seemed dreamlike. I was told I'd be sorted into the fighter barracks in the morning. Nux, he looked at me so strangely as Jaw helped him to his feet and out of the cell. His eyes were all cola, and he seemed to speak to me with quivering lips but my ears were ringing rusty.
All I could will myself to do was reach through the bars, grip Bloodbag's sleeve as he clutched my wrist back to pry me off.
I only hope the psychotic heard me tell him: "If you win the car, get him out. Just get him the hell out of here,"
A month and a half later, elsewhere.
- Ripzag -
"I said, don't touch me!" he growled as he lifted himself from the mattress on his palms and awkwardly twisted himself around to settle into the wheel chair.
He couldn't do it by himself without making his legs go off in sharp aches. They hadn't healed straight, and he went corpse pale every time he had to endure the torture of moving, but somehow he would rather be in pain than let me help him.
Stubborn green mud spawn.
He was rolling his way toward the front corner of the room to the wash bucket and rags. He meant to clean out the hell going on under the bandages of his legs.
We fought again the night before. He wasn't going to walk again on his own, that was fact. He thought he was special, thought he was above the natural order. Of course, ending his suffering and nourishing the clan with the vessel he'd leave behind was one of the considerations. I thought about it, because that was the way things are done, but neither of us wanted him to die, and I'd agreed to send the shaman away and keep Gunner fed and cared for myself... But he was still pissed, unsatisfied, because he thought I'd never consider honoring him by making sure his worthless body was taken in and absorbed by myself and the people. He thought I'd betrayed him merely by hearing the suggestion. Jackass. Every few nights we screamed about it, and how he wouldn't let me touch him, or even assist him if he insisted on continuing on in his suffering.
He'd turned away from Lord Crackle, scoffed at the blessings he's been bestowed and had clearly kept faith in the cruel seed goddess who'd forsaken him again and again. He deserved every bit of scorn the Electri-centric Lord would smite on him, and the ungrateful little dirt lover deserved my scorn too.
I needed to get out of here, away from all this pity and a corpse who had the audacity to keep eating and shitting. So, I got up and made my way for the door, kicking what was in my way aside out of well deserved contempt. Felt good, even if Gunner snarled as if I'd kicked him, not the wash bucket.
"You WEED!" He slung the overturned bucket out the door after me, and as I walked away, I heard the door slam closed.
I had a trade run to make today, I saw no harm in gathering the crew and leaving early. What difference would it make if we sat in the open for a few hours, none, because no one dared to tangle with His Acolytes anymore. We hide our movements in the storms no longer, because we don't have to. We've outgrown hiding, and I've outgrown- never mind.
Lightning Rider was repaired, mostly. She ran pure and clean and the hydraulics to lift her crackle antennae were back, but her steel skin would always bear the scars and the interior would always be stained in my Gunner's blood. I was glaring in at the black splotches on the passenger seat when my new bullet bud crept around the back bumper to address me. Timid thing, I couldn't stand him when he spoke, but he was good with a rifle, I guess.
"We're going? It's only noon," he said so quietly that I could hardly hear him, which was a great part of why I found him so irritating. Couldn't see him either under the hanging mess of hair drooping over his face or the turtle neck pulled up over his mouth.
"Shut it and tell the others, we're moving out in five," and that was all I bothered to say to him for that day. The less I had to hear him speak, the better.
Lightning rider, two cargo pickups and a pair of spotters were all we'd need today. It'd be short, all we'd have to do is head up to the mouth of the canyon into the Dead Barrens and wait. There, I cracked the door open and put my feet up in the window to enjoy the fleeting time I'd have away from the misery at home. The shipment wound up being late. I'd have to scorn them for it even if I was truly thankful.
What greeted us were the Gas Towners, a splintered group of their war forces who now operated privately for their own gain, refining crude into guzz out of reclaimed Scrotus Boy camps. Gas Town and where its profane roots groped was overflowing with crude oil, but well guarded. We Acolytes were not strong enough to do any more than trade in secret with them at this time.
Their rigs were adorned in blacks, bumpers polished. Fetching. Grafts was fetching too, where he wasn't a patchwork of botched skin repairs done by Gastown's meat mechanic, Abdominous. He had a fare face and eyes that always glittered pleasingly.
"Oi! you look awful, Ripper." He called as he stepped out of his rig while the lowers scrambled to trade empty and full transfer tanks.
"Eat me," I didn't bother to get up.
"In'at that s'posed to be the other way around?" He chuckled.
He had absolutely no fear reflex, but it was charming.
"Things've been dirt," I grunted, half hoping he'd ask why. I dunno, I liked his face all pursed up with sympathy.
"Oh, Gunner still stuck on the cot?"
"A wheel chair, pissy too, ungrateful,"
"Ah, but c'n ya blame him?"
Of course, sympathy always swung in Gunner's favor. I shrugged, disinterested in a chat now that my mood had dropped lower.
"...You should take a trip with me an' the boys down to Shatterbone. The House Wars look shine this year." he offered.
"Sorry, I honestly couldn't give a shit less." I told him... But he just can't shut it once he's going. Starting to hate his jabber at much as I did Turtleneck's.
"Aw, stop suckin' the joy out' the world. You gotta see this year's lineup in the flesh. Got a feral on the Red House front line this year. Gory, gory fun, beats the Citadel pits by miles. An' some chain fighter they' callin' The Lizard King. WOOF! Ugly bitch, that one. Hey, he's got double the ugly on 'is face you tha' do, missin' a leg too. Dunno how he ain't splattered yet..."
"Excuse me, what did you say?" I could not fucking believe it. Ol' Hoppy Lives.
Good thing I'm hungry.
