PUMPJACK
It all started innocently enough; the Cisneros family had just returned from their trip across the Rio Grande, and with them they'd brought back all sorts of things. Food and ammunition had been their main quarries, but there were other things of value in those dusty lands up North. According to Ovidia, the youngest of the Cisneros to have gone on the trip, there was something far more interesting than any crop, weapon, or stash of treasure you might find in the wastes: a pumpjack oil well that granted wishes.
"It's a rusty old thing, right? Looked like any other dried up oil well in Texas, only this one had a big road-sign next to it, telling you what it was. There were a few people camping there that night too, and they swore that it'd granted them their wish!" Ursula rolled her eyes as Ovidia took another soulful gnaw at her razorgrain elote. "Mm. I'm telling you, I think that deciding what to wish for might be the most important decision of my life. If it works anyways, but I've got a good feeling…"
Ursula just nodded. She was much more interested in her dinner than Ovidia's tall tales on principle alone, and the fairy-tale nature of this evening's story didn't help. Ursula had read a million stories with the same premise already, and she'd come to the conclusion that wishing apparatures couldn't exist, or the world would have been destroyed ages ago. All it would take would be some horrible person- or worse yet, a curious one, to wish for the wrong thing, and the entire solar system, or galaxy, or universe would go slurping down the metaphorical drain.
Ursula tended to overthink. She was the sort of girl who learned to read before she learned to ride a bike or even swim, preferred Pedro Páramo to Narnia, and on a beautiful summer day, rejoiced at the sight of dark rain clouds in the distance because they meant a respite from the endless badgering from her family to go play outside.
In other words, Ursula was not a very fun 12 year old.
Now, all this was not to say that Ursula did not believe in magic! On the contrary, she knew full well what happened to people who assumed they were too good to harbour those kinds of beliefs. And whether the actual explanation was magical or rational, the end result was reliably fatal and messy, so did it matter?
"Eh, Roland, you do realize I'm talking to you, right? Come on out of your head, all the adults are talking boring shit!" Ursula tightened her grip around her fork and buried her gaze further into her meal. Roland was her middle name. Seemed that the more she tried to make people forget about it, the more it resurfaced in their memories.
"More eating, less talking please," said Ursula. Ovidia twirled her fork around.
"Mm. Or else?"
"Or else…" She thought for a moment. "Or else I'll kill you." Ursula raised her gaze to meet Ovidia's, and saw that there was a spark of competition in her eyes now. The smirk on her lips grew wider.
"Aw, you can do better than that. Come on, how would you kill me? That's the interesting part!" Ursula thought for a moment. It was a hard choice, deciding how she'd destroy her childhood friend, but a list of compelling ways soon began to form itself in her head.
"I think I would stab you in the kidney."
"Better. But still kind of lame." Ursula nodded.
"Yeah. And it would take too long. But I can shoot some- if I shot you in the head and left you for the vultures, I think that'd do fine."
"You're getting closer, but where's the style in just shootin' me? What else have you got?"
"Trip-wire TNT in your bedroom?" Ovidia shook her head.
"You'd probly' catch one of the Dads instead. I'm short enough that I'd see the wire."
"Okay then, how about a staged drowning in the River?"
"Ooh, I like that! But, first you'd have to beat me; I don't see that happening in a fair fight, and you're definitely not gonna get the jump on me in that little fishing boat."
"Fine- I'd tie your shoelaces together first, while I was pretending to reach for something." The two became deadly silent.
"Whoa," said Ovidia, eventually. Ursula crossed her arms.
"Yeah. And then I'd toss you overboard and pretend we got attacked by Mirelurks. We were lucky that even one of us made it back alive…"
"Tu Perra Malvada! How do you sleep at night, when your head comes up with thoughts like these?"
"Soundly."
Meanwhile, as the conversation wore on and dinner grew cold, one of Ovidia's fathers had silently crept up behind the two. Ursula was able to recognize the danger and fall quiet, but she had no way of signaling to Ovidia without also alerting her father. She watched helplessly while Ovidia finished her sentence, trying to keep the growing dread out of her expression.
"...but really, if we're making up ways to kill each other, I think they should be like, based on who we are, you know? Like, you're really smart, so I'd bash your brains out with a cinder-block, to show-"
"Ovidia!"
Stunned, Ovidia glanced over her shoulder to see her father Abundio standing over her. His arms were crossed, and beneath his massive mustache, his expression was stern.
"Uh, hey papa! What did you-?"
"No-no-no- I heard you talking about death! You were talking about killing each other!" Ovidia tried to raise her voice to speak, but was quickly spoken over again. "You know we don't do that at the dinner table, unless we're saying a prayer for the dead! I shouldn't have to explain to you why." Ovidia looked down in shame. Abundio just shook his head. "We've lost enough people these last few years to bad luck. If you can't follow the rules of the table, then shoe, eat your dinner somewhere else."
"But wait, if we stopped talking about it, then-!"
"SHOE!"
Hurriedly, the two children snatched up their meals and scampered away from their places at the edge of the table, out the dinner shed and into the night, where a full moon shone bright in the navy sky over Ciudad Acuña. The air was chilly, and when Ursula noticed that Ovidia was shivering, she silently removed her jacket and draped it over her best friend's shoulders.
"Thanks," said Ovidia.
"Mm."
Together, they made their way over to the settlement's rock-quarry, and dangled their mud-caked boots over the edge. A couple minutes passed in contented silence. Ovidia chucked the mostly-empty cob of her elote into the quarry, and Ursula gave the ground a thoughtful tap with hers.
"Hey, Ovidia-" started Ursula. Ovidia gave a 'hm?' of acknowledgement. "When you were out on your trip, did you-"
"I'm not telling you anything about my wish."
And then there was silence again. Only now it was the angry, uncomfortable sort. Ursula looked pointedly away.
"I wasn't going to ask you about it anyways. I just wanted to know if you wished for anything on this trip, or if you were saving it for later."
"Well obviously I wished for something! What, did you think I was going to just stop at what is, as far as I know, the only working wishing well in the world, and not wish for something? I may never get to go back!" Ursula rolled her eyes.
"Well then, was it at least a good wish?"
"I just told you, I'm not telling you about it! I'm not telling anyone! There's too much of a risk that the wish won't come true that way!" She narrowed her eyes at Ursula. "Why do you wanna know so bad anyways? I thought you didn't believe in wishing wells!"
"I don't. But you can never be too cautious with matters of superstition, you know? Like Mr. Abundio was saying earlier, we've had a lot of bad luck recently..."
"And what, if it was a bad wish, do you think you can help me know that I screwed up with the terms or whatever?" Ursula smiled a bit. "Or help me work with the consequences?"
"No. I just want to know how far away from you I need to stand for the next few weeks."
"Oh, screw you!" Ovidia gave her a good, hearty elbow to the sternum, but both of them were laughing by the end of the attack. "I- you know, tell you what, why don't I just tell you after the wish comes true? That way we can confirm that the wishing-well works, and go from there."
She said it so-matter-of-factly, you'd think that this Wishing Well was federally stamped and approved or something. Given Ovidia's imagination and proclivity for stretching the truth, Ursula couldn't help but shake her head.
"Gonna need something better than that if you want me to believe it. Why don't you write it down somewhere, give me the paper, and then I promise not to read it until afterwards. That way I know you're not just claiming some lucky event," she suggested instead. Ovidia bit her lip.
"Oooohhh… you drive a hard bargain, but I want to be right about something for once. I'll take it!" Ursula drew the pen from her pants pocket.
"Good-"
"On one condition."
The two locked eyes. Ursula checked her jacket for her notepad, then realized that her jacket wasn't currently in her possession, and that Ovidia had already fished it out and jaggedly torn out a page.
"Yes?" she asked. She passed the pen over to her dear friend. For a brief moment, their frigid fingers touched, and stayed that way.
"I need you to pinky promise me you aren't going to look at it. It could ruin everything," said Ovidia. There wasn't a hint of irony in her voice, so Ursula just nodded and went with it. The two laced pinkies...
"I Pinky swear."
Then let go.
Their pact properly sealed, the two girls sat and watched the quarry beneath the stars.
"Ooh, Ursula, down there, look- I think the twins have hit a snag!" Sure enough, at the bottom of the quarry, two identical women were staring puzzledly at something that Ursula couldn't see. She squinted to try and make it out.
"Yeah… hold up, I'm gonna go down there and ask them what it's about. Help me down?"
Wordlessly, the two friends made their way down the red-rock terrace, until one of the twins noticed them and threw a vague greeting their way. By the time the two groups had met, the mutual urge to high five or fist bump or shake hands or something was practically sparking in the lamp-lit space between them.
"Hey, if ain't our resident shit-kids! What are you miscreants two doing down here?" asked one of the twins, throwing down her pickaxe and going in for a good-old-fashioned hand-shake-high-five with Ursula. Ovidia nodded in the direction of the apparent snag.
"We just wanted to see what was holding you two up, you know? Ursula thought it might be something cool." The twins glanced at each other, then at the snag. After a while, one of them shrugged at the other and they both stepped aside, revealing the doors to a dusty blue cargo crate deeply embedded in the wet dirt and gravel. There was a large "WARNING: HANDLE WITH CARE" sticker still discernible on the right door.
"Well, the location does make it kind of interesting, I guess. Do you think it's been here since before the war?" asked Ursula. One of the twins nodded.
"It looks like it. See that little red tag there? It was intact before we broke it, and the date on it is for mid 2077. If my memory serves, that's right before everything went to heck."
"I wonder if it's like, a weapons stockpile or something- you know, apocalypse prepper stuff…" mused Ovidia. Ursula rolled her eyes.
"Or, just a regular supply shipment that they never got around to opening." Of course, she was curious now. She took a few steps over to the mysterious container. "How do you plan to get it open?"
"Well, that's just the problem- it's locked up tight, and since we're both curious too, we don't want to disturb whatever in there needs to be "handled with care" by blowing it up with dynamite…"
"So, we're both just sort of scratching our dicks and wandering in circles around it. Sometimes we pull up a little more of the soil around the container, but that's it."
"Roma!"
"What!?"
"Would you stop swearing around the kids?"
"Absolutely not."
"Why?"
"Cause it's funny!"
"Funny? Only kind of funny that you are is funny-looking!"
"Y- We're twins you goddamn idiot!"
Ursula watched the spat with dull amusement, but after a minute or so of observing the increasingly physical and increasingly stupid spectacle, she realized that Ovidia had left her side, and was now standing over the shipping container. She was staring down with the purpose of God in her eyes.
"Hey, uh, Ovidia, what are you doing over there amiga?" No answer. She simply hunched her small form over, and placed her hands on the massive door handles. For some strange reason, Ursula was beginning to feel a shadow of worry in belly. "Hey, Ovidia, it's locked. Don't-"
"Ey, kid, were you not listening earlier? That thing is locked up tighter than Fort Knox!" said Roma, suddenly dropping the ridiculous spat with her sister to chastise Ovidia. Her words may as well have been spoken into the void. Ovidia had already given the doors one big tug, and was readying herself for another. She closed her eyes and muttered a prayer as she planted her feet in the gravel.
"Ovidia, please, this is getting embarrassing!" said Ursula, rushing to Ovidia's side. "Let's turn in for the night, come back here when we have a plan, some supplies…"
"Hail Mary, Full of Grace, The Lord is with thee! Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus! Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of death! Glory Be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. a-MEN!"
And wouldn't you know it? Something snapped, and Ovidia fell flat on her ass. The ancient doors creaked open, although the effect was somewhat ruined by one of the doors falling right back into place while the other one hung treacherously in place. A brown cloud of dust and rust rose up into the air.
"...May I?" asked Ovidia. She let out a hideous string of coughs, but Ursula could see she was grinning.
"Go ahead, yeah." Slowly, shakily, Ovidia stepped back over to the container, properly opened both doors, and peered inside. Immediately, she froze up.
"What is it?" asked Ursula. Ovidia stumbled back, as Ursula and the twins rushed forwards. The twins made a beeline to look into the mysterious container, but Ursula grabbed her stumbling friend by the shoulders first, tried to establish eye contact. "Ovidia, what's down there? What did you see?"
"I- I don't…" She laughed, but it wasn't the happy kind of laugh. Over her shoulder, Ursula heard excited murmuring from the twins. "Oh my god, I'm dreaming. This is a dream. I'm gonna wake up tomorrow, and you're all going to tell me that I'm crazy, or that I was telling stories..."
"Ovidia!"
"Look, you wanna know so bad? Go and see for yourself! I'm going home for tonight!" Wiping away tears, Ovidia shrugged free of Ursula's grasp and wandered off into the quarry, slogging miserably through mud and puddles as she went.
Shaken but intrigued, Ursula crept up behind the twins, and craned her neck to get a view inside the deep, dark container.
"Would somebody please tell me what in there is causing all this fuss?" she asked, with more stress in her voice at this point than confidence. One of the twins- Roma, by the look of it, stepped solemnly to the side.
"See for yourself."
Ursula looked deep into the container, and immediately covered her mouth. She looked at both the twins, just to make sure they were seeing it too.
Gold. So much Gold. There was enough gold in there, if you melted down all the bars, to fill up a goddamned bath-tub to the brim with the stuff! Ursula had heard estimations for how much gold was worth in its pure form, and she was already doing math in her head.
"It's- oh my god! Oh my god! We're rich now! Maybe the richest people in the wasteland! We can buy literally anything with this!" she laughed, and soon, the twins were both laughing too. One of the twins pointed off towards Ovidia's shadow in the distance.
"Yeah, what's her problem!? She's about to be a hero around here!"
"Right? Is she in shock or something?" Ursula shrugged, but she had a suspicion mounting. Her hand strayed to her pants pocket, where the slip of paper containing the wish sat. The one that she'd pinky promised not to read without permission maybe an hour before. Amidst the feelings of euphoria, she felt the ghost of concern bubbling up in her stomach again.
"Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry." Ursula had read that in a book somewhere when she was very young, and she'd taken it to heart. Just looking at the world around her, she could see that humans were prone to destroying the world when given the tools to do so, and an oil well that granted wishes? That was prime world destroying material. More so than the nukes, even, because the only limit to the destruction was the wishers imagination. Whether it was through ignorance, malice, or sheer curiosity, it was only a matter of time before a tool like that destroyed everything.
"I'm sorry about this, Ovidia," muttered Ursula. She drew the paper from her pocket, and unfolded it in the dim orange glow of Roma's helmet-lantern. As soon as she realized what it said, she closed her eyes and looked away.
Deep breaths Ursula. Deep Breaths. She folded the paper back up, neatly as she could with the jagged edge, and slid it back into her pocket. She took a look down into the container again, just to make sure the gold was still there.
Still there.
And there lay the problem. Written in a horrid chicken scratch across the torn parchment, in all capital letters, were these fatal words:
"TONS OF GOLD"