-Slit-
She said 'pull over, gotta piss'. So I did. Thought I could use a stop anyway. We got out on our respective sides to wet the thirsty dirt.
I felt raw. Dune just sat there with a blank stare when I told her how I got the face she praises so damn much. When she had finally opened her mouth, she said exactly what I expected her to. Something about that just rubbed me wrong. I think I told her because I wanted somebody to fucking hear it and tell me he deserved it, even though I already knew it. Ace knew it. Notch knew it. Tank knew it. Phil knew it for sure and he still said nothing beyond reminding me of it simply to compare Joe to that wad of runny shit. Everyone fucking knew it and said nothing but don't talk about it. They made Nux shut up about it, hoped he was too young to remember it, and sometimes I wondered if he did or didn't recall what happened. I think he did. He was nearly ready to join me as a fully fledged War Boy, excited too. He started hanging around the pits, sizing up others, deciding how he was going to acquire a rig. He could fight for one which had belonged to a fallen brother, or scavenge a wreck and fight for parts to mend it. For a whole and already fierce war chariot, new drivers fought with everything they had. He had shown the promise, so Tank and Notch wanted him to start figuring out how to get behind a wheel. Their instruction on the matter was a few words and verbal permission to go to the fury pits with me for the first time. 'Figure it out' they said, and then gave me a pass on morning patrol to go with him. All went fine, at first. Nux decided he wanted to scavenge a wreck and then fight for the parts because that seemed to be the better bet. He said to me 'I don't wanna spend months undoing some other sod's shite mods when I can do it right in the first place'. I couldn't take him out to the ruins, I didn't have a chariot of my own. We talked Shock and Lugnugget into taking us on a drive to find something to hitch to the back of their boarding wagon. At the time, I was working with them on the crew's patrol and during hunting trips.
Nux came down to the pits any chance he got, just to observe, find out who he could probably take on and who he wanted to avoid battling if he could. Some parts he'd simply need to fight for. The engine, for example. The one time he went without me, he came back with a black eye and bloody knuckles. When I came back from the morning wander with the crew, he didn't talk for hours. I thought he fought in the pit for the first time and lost. I was pissed, thinking he tried fighting without me there to watch. When I put him on the ground and threatened to give him another black eye for it, he shouted that it didn't happen in the pit. Somebody had offered him a trip down to the deep warrens to, 'put those pretty lips to work'. Nux dealt the bastard a beating, once I got his name, he got another beating in the grease pits where I found him. Choked him with his own socket wrench.
Next morning, Nux said 'I want my mouth to look like skull teeth'. Still groggy, I replied 'Just grin then, wanker.'
He clarified what he wanted, pulling his lips around and slurring his words as he explained with his lower lip pinched between his fingers. He ended up pestering me all day to show him how to do it. By then I had a fine collection of self-made cut-ups. There are a dozen ways to do shine skin decals. A thin metal stencil and battery acid. You could put together a custom branding iron if you're fair at forging steel. You could just keep scraping off the first few layers of skin over and over in the same shape too. Back then, the old organic was the go-to guy for that sort of thing, but he used a soldering iron for extensive scarification. Burning wouldn't really work on a mouth, the burns on the mouth would spread to sloppy masses of sloughing skin and blisters. For detail, you needed a blade and lips heal fast from cuts so you had to carve deep to get them to scar right. Nux already had the cuts in his cheeks to accentuate the shape of his skull, a right of passage among many crews although all had their own variations of the ritual. I never had room for mine on the right. Tank said I didn't need the cuts, because there was no need to test my threshold for superficial pain. 'Your grit is already proven.' he gruffed at me when I asked once, which was as close as anyone ever got to mentioning the indecent which marred my right cheek. At the time, seemed to me like Nux was hungry for more scarification.
Nux pushed and prodded and even begged once which got him a swift set of knuckles to the gut but he got up and returned it. He tried to knock me on my ass too but I caught his fist and pushed him back, glared death into him, snarled till I felt feral. It was a warning, fight me and you will lose, but he didn't back down. He came back at me like thunder after the flash of lightning, he was like a storm you didn't know was there until the sand was already biting your flesh. 'I don't want pretty lips, Slit! I want to look kami-fuckin-crazy!' That's why I think he remembered, and somewhere deep he didn't want anyone trying to get their shifter polished by him. I'd tell Dune about that too, but every time I said anything about Nux and the place we were raised, I knew she only pitied me. What drove me nuts was that I reveled in her pity. I wanted a shine hand and to be told I was right to cut that cancer from the Citadel. That's what made me soft, wanting her praise this way. I was going to get chewed up and belched out dead at the Citadel if I kept this up, so I stopped myself before she could reward me with her hand for killing him. No more stories. Maybe no more shine hand for a while.
You can think your way through a lot in the time it takes to piss. I zipped up and turned to get back into the driver side. I was steel hard in my resolve to keep her hands off me but when I turned, the thudding of boots stomping over the hood of the Impala and Dune's body casting a shadow over me stopped me in my tracks. I still had my reflexes, there was that. I caught her weight, turned into her attack and flung her to the ground. It knocked the air out of her chest cage when her back met the packed earth. She'd just tried to maul me.
"What the fuck?! Loony bitch!"
She didn't cough and gulp air for long. She was soon up on her feet, shine and scarred fists up.
"Softy, ya coulda knocked my jaw around the back of m'neck. Aw, don't wanna bust up a scav? Sweet thing!"
Hundreds of days ago, I'd have pounded anyone who dared insult me. Pound um so hard they begged me to take everything from their pockets just to lay off and find something else to do. I didn't always carry out my battles in the pits, unless I needed something you can't get from pockets, like the rush of pure victory. I didn't know what the hell had gotten up in Dune's head, but she was just begging to lose a few of her fangs. Wouldn't be a loss to the world, one less tooth to break through my skin when she was in a mood and decided to get nippy. It came to me then that if she were a War Boy, I'd definitely reduce her face to a shameful, bloody mess but she's not a War Boy. Whatever the hell she was to me, didn't feel right to break her down and make her beg. I could though. I could do that so easily.
"Shut your ugly teeth and get in the car, we don't have time for you to be actin' mental!"
When I moved to slide back into the driver side, she kicked the door closed and stood in front of it.
"Nah Nah! Dune ain't through with you." She declared and gave me a shove with her fist.
When I only glowered down at her, her hand shot out again like a pissed off snake to pinch at my right nipple through my shirt. Reflexes kicked again. My hand covered her face and I pushed her back with enough force to send her into a stumble. Her head knocked the frame of the door and for a split second, she was dazed. That big fucked up grin reappeared though.
"Yeah! That's the way Dune likes it!" The nutter crowed.
"Veeight! What the fuck are you doing? Knock it the fuck off, Dune! You ain't gonna like it in a minute! I'll tie your screwy arse to the bonnet and make you into a hood ornament!"
She shrugged, held out her open hands and laughed as she sauntered my way, looking every bit too sure of herself. "All Dune hears is talk."
I felt the scar tissue inside my cheek pinched by my grinding teeth, I growled through them, anger rising. I was going to give her a much uglier smile if she didn't can it. I was that damn close to grabbing her and stuffing her into the trunk for a while, maybe I'd find some rough terrain to bounce her around in there for a bit. Didn't care for the idea of damaging that shine hand, though. I didn't want her to touch me with the cursed thing for a while, but I didn't want it useless.
"Get. In. The. Car."
I was just about to grab her and drag her into the cab, kicking and screaming. Her lips only pulled into a snarl at the underlying threat, she didn't want to obey. Wouldn't be Dune if she did what I told her to when she really should.
"C'mon War Boy, where's yir balls? In my pocket? Come 'n get 'em!"
If she was looking for a fight, she just found one. I had just wanted to get back into the car, drive, and get through the next two weeks, maybe remind myself with my razor that I could take whatever the brothers back home could throw at me. I'd tear their heads off and shit down their necks for the very words Dune just shot out of her loud mouth. In a blinding rush of kamicrazy adrenaline, she was flattened against the flank of Shirley. The bump rails I installed at Phil's grease pit could have broken her back and made those scarred up legs useless if I hadn't lifted her by the belt before I slammed her. She tried getting her arms up. They were easy to grab and pin back, her ass dropped onto the bar of the rail as I let go to stop her rapping fists. She was a ruthless sniper, decently dangerous in a fight if she was pissed off first but without the fire in her gut, she was ineffective against me. Complete shit because no one taught her to fight proper. She relied on rage and survival instinct. She could throw a fair punch, but not with her hands held over her head. She growled from deep in her chest, tried to get her legs up between us but only succeeded in helping me get between them so she couldn't kick me in the guts. She tried pushing back with her knees in my sides, bucking around and snapping her teeth but it couldn't help her now. She'd jammed her finger at the wrong button on me. I brought my head forward hard enough to knock hers into the roof but kept it there to grind her much smaller skull between mine and the steel of the Impala. Her breath was like hot exhaust polluting the air, so was mine.
"You still think my sack's in your pocket?" I couldn't take her shine hand and shove it down my pants to prove I still had um right where they should be. It'd provoke some real anger if I did that and she'd probably try to rip them out of their comfortable wrapper. So, I ground my zipper and everything behind it against her lower belly. "I'll whoop your mediocre arse all night and you'll never even get close to gettin' um."
Her face screwed up when I pulled back, looking almost like she was repulsed. I laughed, spite coming on to join my fury, but she exploded into laughter too. It shut me up. She struggled to speak through her cackling, throwing her head back after every false start to yowl and yip some more. She sounded like a wild dog.
"Ha! Heh HAH! Haven't gotten jolly nasty and done a good tumble with mah Ducky in months! Can't keep a straight face! Hah! What joy, she missed this fun!"
Was that what she wanted? Fun? What's fun? I couldn't remember. We used to roll around socking the crap out of each other for shade, for the last sip of cola in the canteen, for the hell of it, and that was fun. We hadn't had a good scrap, not without real intent to maim out of rage since the day lightning screwed up the whole system I lived by with the scaly sand witch for so long. Almost three months. Long enough for the scars on her head and feet to heal, maybe long enough for her to miss this and for me to forget I enjoyed it. It was like it had been before everything got fucky too, back when we could be vulgar without it being weird or meaning something. For just a minute, it felt like that again for the first time in what felt like a V8 damned age. Dune just kept on laughing, even swung her legs like some cheery pup. Provoked near to pummeling a psychotic, now infected by her inane glee, I couldn't and didn't care enough to contain a reckless urge. I wanted to bite the little demon, bite her back for every time she sank her vicious teeth into me. I wanted to bite where she was soft and would hurt even if I didn't break the skin, which I might anyway. If she wanted to play this old game, I wasn't going to play it nice and domestic just because it got all cozy and civilized at the not-so-green place.
She didn't flatter herself with the high pitched noise coming out of her when I pulled her away from the flank of the car by the collar of the denim jacket and threw her onto the bonnet with a suppressed grunt. I could sense my lips pulling into a mad snarl of wicked joy. She kicked at my face, ribs, could've shattered a collarbone if I hadn't turned quick enough to shoulder the blow. She caught me in the chin once with the toe of her boot, so I bit my own tongue long before I got a good hold on her ankles and pulled her in close enough to throw up her shirt and take a mouthful of her just over the left hip bone. My jaw clenched, hard. Her voice was shrill, it echoed over the vast emptiness around us, so did the cracking of knuckles over my skull. She was striking harder now, might have a few knots on my head later. Looks like I flipped the right switch to get her nitro flowing. Next, she gripped my ears to pry me off, her flesh came up with my mouth for a moment before I let go and the nature of healthy skin had it snapping back into place. She wasn't bleeding, that was my own blood on her, but she'd bruise in the shape of my bite.
Her furious maul of razors opened and clicked shut on air, she wanted more than a nibble now, and it was my delight to antagonize her even though she still held my ears hostage. Blood pinkened spittle flew past my lips and landed in a splatter right between her beady green eyes.
That got her blood hot. She dug her heels into my guts and kicked. Thankfully she let go of my ears first, but I could feel the sting of cuts her nails carved through the thin skin over cartilage. I always suspected she was half feral, the way she got up on her hands, pulled her legs in and planted them under her with a hiss confirmed it. She sprung like a starving rat at a scrap of meat, brought us both to the dirt and the only thing stopping her from getting her teeth around me was my palm thrown forward to slap against her windpipe. She fell backward between my flesh and metal legs, gagging. When I rolled forward to get the upper hand again she swung her leg out in a wide arc. The sole of her boot met my face from jaw to temple. I was dazed just long enough for her to shove me back and... With my wits returning, I still couldn't move. She had a hold on me where I did not want to be bruised or bloody.
"What was that about never even gettin' close to yir boys? Who's got yir balls now?"
That blows the hot air right out of you, it's not fair either. Like a moron, I hoped the humor of honesty might get her to let go.
"Actually, jus' my thunderstick, they're lower."
My words did nothing to help me, she merely leaned closer, crouched over me and showed me her teeth up close up. Freaking reptile. Couldn't do much with her merciless scar hand full of canvas and my gear but with the realization that she didn't care what she had so long as she was winning the game, I threw out caution, mashing my palm into what I know would hurt if I gripped and twisted. That got her to let go alright, so she could parry my hand off her left tit.
Cheap moves, though seizing my junk was never in her repertoire of shitty tactics before, tit grabbing was definitely in mine. It pissed her off, but it also usually signaled that the game was coming to a close. It would break down into pup level vindictive dirt struggling, yanking out clumps of hair, jamming thumbs into armpits, twisting back fingers until somebody got sick of it and called quits, or somebody would get a really foul blow that knocked the stupid out of them. This time was different. Neither felt compelled to end it. I can't speak for the whacko, but I had forgotten how much I needed this. Struggling and rolling in the dirt for no reason in particular, because I liked it, because she liked it too. Me snarling, her laughing, sometimes both screaming obscenities. It was like we were purging three months of rust from our combined system, a much-needed tune-up. We fought till muscle cramped and burned, till bones ached, till knees and elbows were scuffed open. Her teeth were stained red from having her justified taste of me, the harsh color spilled down her chin with a line of drool as we grappled. Her right eye was trying to swell closed, didn't mean to do that though, she caught an elbow once while I was trying to keep her from biting down on anything important. Both of us had wrists rubbed raw from friction burn as each reversed the hold of the other countless times. My left pinky was swollen thick, maybe broken. We writhed and moved sluggish on the ground next to one of the front tires. I had her legs pinned under me, my arms coiled tight around both her own arms and her middle to keep her from putting another lump on my skull. She kept wiggling, squirming, it made her shirt ride up, her pants down, and the jacket bunched under her shoulders. We were like a camp's fire that hadn't been extinguished under a boot, we'd been left to burn ourselves out and only smoldering cinders remained.
She was moaning hoarse, having shrieked her battle cry at me a few too many times. Her legs wrapped around me, heels digging into my spine and catching on both scars and belts as she tried to arch and twist herself out of my grasp. With my chin prodding her in the bare navel, I watched her struggle. Half of me was self-satisfied that I was winning, the other half held a bizarre desire to have her figure out how to free herself and keep our game going. She gave one last defiant scream, thrashed her head side to side, bucked with all her waning strength, then lay on the filthy ground under me. She was limp and shook from the exertion, flesh not yet accepting that it was done fighting. We both panted, heaving in chestfuls of air. The gusts of breath felt chrome on the sweat of my brow. After a long minute, I let her arms go free. She simply let them flop away from her body and lay, needing to cool herself. I needed that too but to untangle myself from her legs, I didn't want that. I had no desire to leave their embrace.
I could see her pulse, the thudding of her blood pump in the soft spot just under her sternum. I'd seen it before, wanted to feel it before, but had been rudely interrupted. My head was cloudy and wasn't thinking straight. I dragged myself forward on my elbows, up the length of her prone body, then felt the rhythmic surging of her blood pusher under my tongue through her skin. Maybe she thought the game was still being played and maybe it was. Her hands slapped over my shoulders and her fingers formed fists around bunches of leather and sweat dampened polyester. She tasted like salt and dirt, made my gut clench and stomach flip-flop in that gratifying way. I was throwing a different kind of guzz on our still warm embers, and I couldn't locate my senses to stop myself. Hands roaming my bruised scalp stoked rising flames. We were going to get burned.
She would go still, then shift and her legs would tighten around me. I froze, too, whenever she moved. The bite, I had to put my mouth on that. The indents from my teeth had turned into fat welts and the way they felt under my lips was strangely appealing. She was marked mine, not that anyone else would be around to look, but if anyone happened to see her midriff they'd find what I left there. She went rigid and trembled. I thought she approved, but her thumb hooking around my windpipe to push me back said otherwise.
"Mmfph... Slit? What're ya doin'?"
When I turned my eyes up to see her, she wore a confused grimace. Good question, what was I doing? Self-awareness returned with a vengeance. My ramrod was awake and raging in my trousers and Dune was painted in senseless streaks of red from the blood running out of my tongue where I bit it earlier. The fuck was I thinking?
"You're jus'... Licking."
-Dune-
"Mmfph... Slit? What're ya doin'?"
The switch in the temper of our struggle was not swift, not like last time. Ragged breath flowing over my ribs in ebbing waves had transformed to a lapping tongue. It was sloppy like the way Slit licked his bowl clean after he ate. He even grunted and grumbled the same as when he chowed down on something he liked. Potatoes and bush tucker boiled tender would have him making that sound. The feel of it was so peculiar that I shuddered at it. I felt like he was tasting me as if I was a morsel of grub. I didn't dislike it, it tickled and added to the slick left upon the skin after a hard tussle, but it felt so... funky. I pushed my thumb into his throat to get him to back off. He glared at me, frustrated, perhaps still a little revved up from the fight too. Or so I thought.
"You're jus'... Licking."
He rose to his hands and knees, then I saw what was the matter. Oh, he had himself an angry one-eyed trouser snake and I was assuming that it wanted to bite me. Now, I'd said sometime back that poor Duck needed to figure out how he really felt about returning to the Citadel, we both needed to recover from the events which led to and took place at the once glorious location of my birth, but that past conversation was the last thing on my tired mind. I felt the aches and the warmth in muscle and bone that had grown unaccustomed to our snarly rolls in the sand over the time spent with Arddie's clan. I wasn't thinking about the words we had in Mama's shipping container house, nor the lost look in the War Boy's eyes when he wasn't sure what to do. All this scav could think about was how long it had been since anyone touched her like this.
I hadn't thought about it in a long time, maybe deep down, I didn't see myself that way any longer. I'm a mean, mean scavenger but to feel the flesh be praised just for existing? Not something I'd known since a boy named Hippie tried to teach a girl named Dune how to hold a rhythm on a drum made from an old coffee tin. A long, long, long time ago. I haven't known this since before fire burned up my world. It felt like it was all from some other lifetime.
I'd been reliving a memory, it was faded around the edges and I couldn't remember where I was when it took place. Hippie had short strawberry blond hair, dimples in his cheeks, soft brown eyes, tan lines from his shirt and gloves. We had giggled like the children we'd truly been without knowing it and lay in the shade out of sight, exploring each other all over. And then we found secluded shade away from the caravan any chance we got. Maybe I'd lied to my Ducky, maybe Hippie had certainly been that girl's type but that girl was gone, wasn't she? In her place was me, the nasty longshot.
When I returned to the place where I had left myself, I was looking through Slit, not at him. I had sat myself up on a bruised elbow, chewing the back of my knuckles and my eyes were wet. The failed War Boy was looking at me, head cocked and wondrously mangled face twisting up in his special brand of vexed concern. The furious meat arrow he'd had was gone too. How long was I lost inside my soiled brains?
He was getting up. Slit never took his eyes off me, like he was afraid I might bolt for cover if he looked away, and reached for the driver side door handle as he sat on his knees. Maybe being licked like a dirty plate wasn't what I had been expecting, or particularly wanted, but it made me feel shiny. I felt a true loss in his retreat from me. He looked like he'd been caught tampering with someone's wheels, not guilty, but anticipating a shit-storm. I wanted his rough hands, and his hot breath, and his roaming tongue. I wanted it all back.
"Wait!" I had cried out and taken his wrist to stop him from opening the door.
He froze, a tendon of his neck jumped as his jaw flexed. I could tell him everything, explain how long it's been and that I couldn't even promise that I remembered enough to make this easy and lead the way, but what would those words do for either of us? Nothing but sow the seeds of doubt.
"Not here, too open. Exposed."
He swallowed hard at my words, I watched the apple of his throat bob up and down. Made me want to bite it.
"Where?" He grumbled so low and deep that it took me right back in time to when every word he spoke tore up his throat in growls.
Had to think, it was hard to do when all the will to use my skull stuff with reason and purpose was fast leaving me. What was close by but secluded? We were too close now to occupied territories to linger anywhere too long with that kind of thing to distract us. It came to me after a moment and a look around to make sense of our position on my mental map.
"The Lookout." I offered and he rose to stand. The door was opened and we just about dove back into the safety of Lady Shirley.
He drove, he knew where he was going but seemed different. The way he urged Shirley to accelerate was more aggressive, his fingers tapped against the wheel in broken rhythms, his shoulders were hunched. He was anxious, I wondered if this was how he looked before being called to war during his time as Joe's boy soldier. A hand sought to soothe him, his breath hitched at it, yet lips parted to accept my fingers between them. He sucked for but a moment before turning away from my touch to see ahead. I left a shining trail of his slick from the corner of his lip to his earlobe. What a handsome forked up face. The red in his skin could have been from the wrath of the sun, but I swore that I watched the flesh under his stubble grow darker before my very eyes. Temptation, I wanted him ready the moment we arrived upon the lookout, so dare to tease him I did. A hand gripped my knee tight enough to leave bruises the size of fingerprints as his left ear was made wet with curious lips.
My whole and feeling hand ventured under the rat-holed cloth of his shirt, rediscovering the doodles in his flesh which had beckoned the first caresses nearly eight hundred days ago. He pawed at my hand through the fabric, grasping it once he found it and pressing it over himself where he now wanted it. A groan erupted from him and for a moment his skull fell back against the headrest. His thick fingers could not remain pressed over mine, showing them how he liked them to move over excited flesh and coarse canvas. He had to drive, navigate. I was afraid he might bite open his own lip. This scav was feeling something new but familiar. Terror, purpose, and anticipation were as one, like when I had my finger on the trigger. I had to mind the wind while controlling my racing pulse so that I could see down the scope and aim true. Strange, strange, strange. This moment felt more real than any other had in many months. I hid my face in the crook of his neck, trying to calm myself by counting the movement of his jugular under my lips. It didn't work, his blood was moving just as hot and fast as my own.
Shirley stopped short, I was thrown against the dash. Ducky momentarily let a hand hover by my head. He hadn't meant for that to happen. One look around through the windows and I knew we'd arrived. The speed of the journey must have been some kind of record. The revolver was pulled from his holster and checked. He always compulsively checked, nudging the cylinder out to give it a ritual spin with his thumb before slipping it back into place and depressing upon the hammer. He remembered my teachings, it filled me up with a pride that was hard to contain as he exiled himself from the cab and circled the familiar stone formation where I played the siren in the lean times. My hands roamed over myself, impatient, desperate even. I wanted him to hurry. He disappeared where I could not see.
POP!
That was a shot! He'd discharged his weapon, why? Was there someone else here? Gut instinct overrode the silliness of physical wants. I snatched my long-lookers from the seat and tore back the roof hatch to have a look around. We'd been stupid, we'd been too hasty. I saw no other sets of wheels and heard nothing, not even the stamping of boots, although my blood rushed and whooshed in my damaged ears so ferocious that I could scarcely hear a thing anyway so what point was there in straining to hear? No, had something happened to my Ducky? I dropped back to the seat, gathering Mama's dutiful rifle and my ammunition to load her up. I could hear Mama, demanding blood. Felt like ages since I heard her secret words.
Eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, and blood for blood, my girl.
Was just about ready to leap from Shirley and unleash scav madness, but a horrendous slap and thud rocked the whole Chevy. I shouted, aimed up through the hatch I'd neglected to close. It was Slit, had to point my deadly barrel away.
"A scav almost SHOT you!" The words poured out like a spurned mother's chiding. He grinned down at me, the cruel but pleased smile I hated to love.
"In or out?" He said as he leaned down through the hatch. At first, I was confused but once my frazzled and busy brain figured out what he meant, I might as well have tossed Mama's lead spitter over the dash so I could reach up and drag Slit down through the opening in the roof by the collar of his vest and shirts.
"You foolish, foolish boy. Dune thought you found someone unfriendly! What the hell did you shoot?!"
He bitched and whined about how his metal leg was leaving gouges in the paint as he was forced to crawl up the flank and in through the roof but as he landed, practically in my lap, he answered me without really answering.
"Don't worry 'bout it."
Couldn't argue, if he told me not to worry I believed him. Dangerous Duck was a fighter and quick upstairs. I trusted him. It was almost another tussle with renewed energy, in place of giggles and gasps were bared teeth and hisses. I liked the way his bottom lip pulled down when he was pleased. He pushed and pulled, we wrestled our way over the backrest of the front seat. First, he put me on his lap, then he put me under himself so that he could lick and taste again. This time, it wasn't so funky. I rewarded him with hands either side of his scarred face. I clutched and wrapped him up with every limb to keep him close. He nosed his way under my shirt and bliss. I became suddenly aware that he had a fixation with what could feed the young if I ever had the desire to create a progeny. Where I grew up, I never imagined a grown man latched on there, but he pulled and slurped as if some form of sustaining nourishment could come from me. It was then that I considered reminding him that I was no milk mother, yet I didn't want what he was doing to stop. It was both painful and terribly wonderful. Once, long ago, he asked why I don't make cheese which spurred a long talk both explaining to me how cheese is made and explaining to him that I neither produced milk nor knew of how to make the cheese he asked for. That was way at the beginning. He knew I had nothing to give him but still, he suckled and licked. Inevitably I grew bored of this, I wanted to taste him now so I took him by the ears and pulled him up so that I may feel his ruined lips with my own. Beautiful boy, lovely battle fodder, why had it taken this long to try this? Maybe because we both had room to grow first, had old hurt which needed to heal.
Another struggle took place. Teeth, both his and my own, threatened flesh but never broke it. I was smashed near flat between his scorching hot skin and the glass of the side window. It was getting dark out, that was when I noted the time of day. Strange how much your senses take in even when they were occupied with the flesh and intentions of another body. I sucked the hair studded flesh of his neck against my tongue, it was rough and stung my mouth. Now it was his turn to ask...
"What are you doing?"
"Marking you up? 'cause you're my Ducky."
He'd never had himself a hickey before. You could tell. He squirmed and wriggled the whole time, and when it was done he had to see for himself the red splotch which would soon form a bruise as he looked into a side mirror. Sweet Duck, a part of me wished he'd had the chance to learn these things with me long ago so that not every little thing was an all-new journey. When he returned to me, scratching at the bruise on his neck, he asked me a question which broke me into a million pieces, each almost too sharp to touch.
"What am I supposed to be doing?" He asked.
His hands hovered and clenched to fists, uncertain where to put them. It could be my fault, showing him in the Green Place that so much as a kiss is rewarded with a vengeful backhand. We had to stop, and I had to explain. I knew the order things had to happen. He may or may not have. I took his hands and brought them to where they had been before he left to inspect what I had done to him. He'd had his fingertips tickling their way around the waistband of my trousers. I put them back.
"You undress Dune, and she undresses you," I told him.
We were clumsy, I gouged myself under the fingernail on something I removed from his person. He noticed the blood before I did, he made a quiet fuss over it and cleaned the red away with his tongue. He pulled up my long sleeve and tossed it over the seat. Shy boy. Slit pressed his face to my collarbone while I pulled up his shirts and leathers. I slung his things aside, then acquainted myself with his shape. Piles of clothes had formed. I opened his fly, he dragged my slacks down my legs, and in the waning day, we let each other explore. I felt that there was a longing for it not to be the work of fate, for it to be because we chose it. I led his hands and showed them how to move. For but a second, it was enrapturing. Joy! Glory! His fingers were just rough enough to feel incredible, instead of like sandpaper.
"It's so wet," He said, pulling away. I had to reassure him.
He said it felt like an open wound, he even examined his fingers as if to be certain that there was no blood. He needed more than just my word, I placed his fingers back where they had been, pressed my lips to his good ear, and I told him the truth.
"It's like that because I want you, Slit."
-Slit-
Undress, that's simple enough. My gauntlet and blade came away from my arm into her hands. She cut her finger on it. She only lost a drop and she shouldn't be careless with a blade that sharp, but I took her hand anyway and slipped the finger between my teeth to suck the digit clean. It got exciting again. Dune damn near tore the collar of my shirt to get it off and she had to wriggle her hands between us to get my belt off. I had her crushed to me, I needed to feel the pressure of her flesh, the way her muscle and sinew moved against mine. Then there was the shine of how the bone of her pelvis felt digging into my gear shift. The chill creeping in through roof hatch made naked skin prickle all along the front half of her once I got her out of the denim jacket and her layers of clothes worn thin with constant wear. I felt the loathing of the cold on her flesh under my hands but couldn't seem to look at her to witness it with my own eyes. It still felt like a crime to be seen getting soft on someone. She opened my trousers and curled her shine hand around me when I came free. I had no choice but to move into it, flesh and bone definitely knew the difference between her chrome fingers and the ridges and calluses of my own palm. If she kept me in her grip, I would not endure for long. She showed mercy, let me finish doing what I'd been tasked with. I had to pull off at least one of her boots first, I ignored the other, too impatient to bother when I could just as easily let her pants hang around her other ankle.
Sometime after we both sat there with near nothing on us, she guided my fingers to herself and pressed her shiny digits between my own. It felt precisely the same as the time I was torn open on Buzzard spikes, slick and hot. It wasn't what I expected. I expected to be slurping my fingers for ages to get her slippery enough to make it all work without it feeling like fucking sand for the both of us. I exclaimed at it, pointing out the obvious and pulling back on reflex to check for red. Nothing amiss, clear as cola.
"...I want you..." She told me in more words that I didn't really hear, yet understood. She wanted me, the sodden feel of her on my fingers was the proof of that. Why? Because I'm still fuckin' chrome, that's why. I tried desperately to believe that. Just that day I thought I might be too soft to go back to the Citadel and survive it. Dune might have decided to try whooping me much earlier just to prove me wrong on that front.
Scars and skin mingled. It smelled different than an aggravated ass kicking match. It was heady, thick, it stuffed my sense of smell with nothing else but the funk of our nude filth. We wouldn't have enough cola to bathe till we returned to her homestead, so the aroma would have to linger. She lapped a swath of hot slick from the heel of her palm to her fingertips when she touched me the same as I touched her. 'Look at me' the nutter said in the fading light and told me that it was okay to see what I was doing and see what she was doing too. Heads knocked a few times, it was only needy nudging to get at lips and urge one another to give access or move. She looked black as soot where veiled in shadow and silver where the rising moon glistened upon her. She was well muscled, though less defined than even a weak man because of the layer of softness between her strength and her surface. All her shapes were rounded next to mine, smooth curves, like classical automobiles from a time before the before. Her scent, she smelled like the biting perfume of sweating in the sun and gun grease.
Boundaries were crammed into the back of our heads. Dune snatched my hand and suckled my middle and index fingers, tasting her own flavor. It's easy to imagine that mouth wrapped around something else and if it weren't for the knives she had for teeth I might have asked for it. I got bold, put her on her back once again and tried sliding my gear stick through the warmth of her self-lubricated glory. She showed those teeth, tried to pull me closer with her legs. With a gust of breath, she sheathed me as if I were a blade and her the scabbard. I wasn't worried that she'd bite, I begged her to clamp her jaw down like a vice just so that my ghost and my meat suit weren't pulled apart from each other, even had a fistful of her hair to pull her in and keep her chewing on me.
I felt her from the inside and her teeth were in my skin again. Shirley rocked with us and something squeaked harshly again and again. I came up from the stupor just long enough for a thought to arrive and remind me that the Impala probably needed better struts and shocks, then the six inches of space between my ears was empty again. Once or twice, our combined noise was so raucous that I had to lift my head and check the windows to see that no buzzard headlights were approaching. If anyone out there was hearing this, maybe they were being smart and avoiding what could be mistaken for the sound of a slow murder. She'd drag me down again with arms around the back of my neck.
The end was abrupt and for a time I felt separated from myself, on the outside looking in. For a second, I thought we might've traded souls, just pulled them out of ourselves and put them inside each other. Recovering from that was a slow fall, physical awareness slithered back to me like the purposeful undulation of a snake. Her mouth had left the scars over my face cool and moist. Why do we always end up with blood in our mouths? I could taste my own red from one or all of the dozen times when we swapped spit and I definitely felt the sting of a few new bites. We might have slept for a short time, it was the most comfortable rest I've had in years, maybe ever, even though I felt every twitch of the maniac's knees and elbows. I couldn't sleep forever, there was still the goanna I'd blown the head off of, something fresh to eat. As we rose from the comfortable tangle, clothes got mixed up. She had my shirt, I had her father's denim jacket.
-Dune-
Slit was the first to leave the Impala. The cold of the night rushed in and swept about the car faster than I could ever hope to be prepared for it. Slit pulled the jacket tighter around himself and tried to shake off the chill. I bet his head felt mighty frosty that night, what with being freshly sheered. There was very little light left, I could barely make out his shape in the soft glow of moonlight against the sand as I clambered over the seat and stepped out. He had stopped, I could hear this fact more than see it.
"We haven't been here since the day of the storm."
His words were flat, the textures of inflection absent from the baritone of his voice. The sound of air leaving him slowly indicated a sigh, and I wondered if he was remembering. I could only remember parts of that day myself. Wrecks, a full jerry-can, a War Boy all painted in white with a hole through his melon, how young the boy looked. So, so young. The rest was nothing but blurs and images that flicker in my mind as if shown to me by the light of a single candle flame.
"You a'right, Duck?"
"M'fine just feels spooky." He admitted to me.
I thought about it for a moment. We hadn't been out here roaming the familiar territories since then, not in a purposeful way. In the morning, it would be a good idea to keep an eye out for something to fire off lead into for the maggot farm. What we were given to eat on the way home would not last long at all, not the slightly less than two weeks we had to gather our crap and go to the place we agreed to meet the others for the long journey to the Citadel. We needed maggots for home and for the trip. We came to this spot months ago to end a debate about Citadel convoy routes, our world got turned inside out, now we had returned to this place to, for lack of better analogy, scald away the confusion of it all with bodies that burn so furious.
"Full circle," I replied
"Yeah," The War Boy-turned-scav grunted back. "There still shit hidden here to burn?"
He wanted a fire for his cold bones, and although I knew the light could attract the desperate long before I'd be ready to make easy work of them, I could not say no. I had indeed hidden away brush and some old garbage which burns up easily here. It was buried at the foot of the stone. It is best not to hide things like that in the crevices where it could become a home for critters which sting and bite. The cool sands had kept it dry and safe. Ducky disappeared and returned quickly to pester me about sparking up some flames. We dug a depression into the sour earth with our hands and my flint lit up our small slice of the world.
When his form was illuminated in dancing flame light and striking shadows, I could see that he had a meal fit for two hungry sets of gutty works. It hung from his hand by a thick tail. Oh my! What had this goanna been eating?! What a robust thing, I might have been wary of a ravenous mouth and many needle-sharp fangs had it not been missing most of its head. This must be what Slit had shot at just after we arrived. Bright man, a true scavenger now who lets no opportunity be passed up. His lovely ugly-gorgeous lips pulled up at the corners as I unsheathed my blade and passed it to him. He had plenty of sharps on his person but this was a mock trade of ritual. Take my knife and let us share a feast. He knew well, after all this time, that if I hand him my blade it meant he was truly being sung praises in the silence of the work we had then to do. It took only a few cuts to create a ring around the neck of the scaly beast, then a split down the belly, and then Slit peeled the tough skin from the lizard like rolling off a sock. He let me gut it, I was better at not slicing into the things which make a righteous stink and spoil the meat. Some of the innards are good for eating. The heart is good, but chewy. The waste was dumped as far as I was willing to step away from the fire. A little wire the tire iron makes a good stick with which to hold it over the flames. Slit handled the business of getting the lizard crispy enough to eat while I had something I needed to do. I scrubbed my hands as clean as they could get in the sand and grit, then fetched my canteen and the jug of water.
The catnip, a necessary torture now. Awful stuff which tastes nothing like the kinder members of its green family. Ducky cocked his head curiously at the canteen when I dropped several generous pinches of the finely ground leaves into the spout and shucked away the cloth cover. The naked canteen was a watertight shell of stainless steel. I could boil water in it simply by dangling it over the flames on another thread of wire. I didn't bother telling Slit why I had chosen to flavor the clear life-sustaining fluid. He looked so damn pleased with himself that I wouldn't dare point out what I'd need such a brew for. I wasn't particularly worried because if I counted the days like Arddie told me to do, the window for consequences had passed several days before we left The Green Place and I'd soon be a mean ol' thing for a week anyway. It's best to err on the side of caution.
He stole the first sip of it a while after I'd pulled it from the flames to cool, he cringed but swallowed before passing it back and drinking awkwardly from the much heavier jug of untainted water.
"Tea is disgusting." He grumbled as he inspected the lizard to see if it as cooked through enough to gnaw up.
He liked his food well done, and I suppose that could have something to do with one of the stories he'd told me that afternoon. Well cooked grub isn't so likely to give you worms or the liquid laughs. I once had to show him how I prepared maggots, just so that he'd keep eating, oh that was so long ago. I had to drag him up from the interior to the place where wind-worn holes in the rock gave the flies access to the tubs, pull him along where the crawls and squeezes got difficult for his healing flesh to navigate. He had cursed me and scratched at my arms the entire way until I propped him up on a sloping wall of stone. He had gagged at the smell I had long grown accustomed to while I washed freshly gathered crawlies in a fine wired flour sieve, pouring what he calls cola over them to rinse away the filth. Then I'd stun them with salt and give them a little touch of fire before another rinse. They would still writhe slowly, but they would be tastier this way and you wouldn't have to chew them up diligently to make certain they didn't make a meal of you instead. Oh, how time had changed things.
The smug look on the former cannon fodder's bruised face was positively endearing. Sometimes it seemed that he'd smile at nothing, or perhaps a thought up in his head would inspire the smirk. He scratched at the deep red bruises I'd kissed into his neck and his stained teeth showed at that. He kept close too, I always felt the heat of his side against my shoulder while we picked the flesh from the bones of the lizard. The charred ribs would crunch between our gnashing teeth. An unbecoming calm had swept over us. You should never be so at ease, no no no. But with the warmth of his presence, the fire, and the hot tea heating me from within it became sinfully easy to forget how to be vigilant. I started to hum a tune, a little something of a wordless ear-worm at first but soon I could hear Mumsy's lovely voice and you just cannot refuse the urge to sing along with her, in your head or not.
"I know you've been hurt by this ugly world... I can tell by the way ya carry yourself, But if you let me... oh-whoa! Here's what I'll do. I'll take care of you. Nah nah nuh nah."
Ah! And the rhythm of a drum came to join the melody, it was merely the patting of my own hands against my knees. I was happy, radiant as the gleam of nicely polished chrome bumpers in the noon sun. Ducky turned his head to glance down at me, a brow lifted as he worked a bit of bone and gristle between his incisors to strip every last corpuscle of nutritious material from the inedible bits. It gave me a pause, how can a man manage to look stoic and unimpressed even with a bit of food hanging out of his face? Only Slit could seem to do it. He spat the splintered bone into the fire and leaned to bump me with his weight.
"Go on, then." He rumbled.
Encouragement to perform now? Perhaps I should have ridden him long ago if it got him so apt to be my one-man audience. Well, I certainly couldn't disappoint him, could I? A singin' longshot had a reputation to keep.
"I, I've fought and lost, the same as you. So you see, I know just what you've been through but if you'll let me, here's what I'll do. Oh! I just gotta take care o' you..."
How lovely. He let me sing my way through an entire song without interrupting or rolling his eyes, and it was wondrous to lean into someone and feel the lyrics possess me for a little while. Mama used to talk about another place in time where people would sing around fires, laughing and playing like children, trying mind-expanding treats, and experimenting with their own limitations. She would say 'I was a child of the sixties, Sweet-thing. I had all my fun before you came along to bring it back.' It's easy to forget that my mum was not a young parent and that I was a pleasant surprise, according to her. Oh, my sore flesh and bone sang sick and ugly for him. We're such an incredible, nonsensical, unlikely mess. I sang around mouthfuls of lizard, and he'd just lean back into me and grumble around his food with half-lidded eyes. I know I had mixed up words, butchered lyrics and made a grand mess of a once beautiful sound. Maybe I sang it twice, can't be sure, my voice box hurt already from all the whooping and hollering of the day we'd had, and what a day. I was sipping my long cooled catnip swill and humming the tune again when he spoke to me, leaning his heavy upper body into me until he lay across my lap. There was something very ultra-green and chrome too about doing this old ritual in total privacy. We hadn't had the chance in so long.
"Who was that?" He asked me, almost sweetly.
"eh?"
"The singer." Ducky seemed to have figured out during our time in my old home that songs come from specific performers. Clever man. He was rewarded with a hand on his freshly bald head. I already felt the slightest resistance of the hair growing back. He winced because the sun had burned him through the day.
"Oh, first time Dune heard it, Mumsy sang it. Heard it later on one o' her records. Don't remember who, lots of before folk sang it and changed words around, but she likes Mum's version best. Mum used to sing it to Pa, usually when us young'uns were just getting home at dusk. Ma would be wearing pa's shirt and singin'. He'd just smile and smile and smile. Come to think of it, Dune suspects Mum used to sing at pa after ballin' him."
Slit snorted, almost choking on a bit of lizard and talking around his next bite.
"And now you're wearin' my stuff and singin' it at me? Corny."
"Jus' popped into my head, Duck. Ya even know what corn is?"
"Nope...You never told me what he was like, by the way."
Hmm, such an auspicious thing for him to say while he was wearing the jacket Pa had worn every day in all the years I knew him. My fingers found the places where Ma had repaired it, even the much older stitches that Rus and Flick's Ma had repaired before her untimely death. Pa told me about her once. Told me it was a simpler, easier time, that she was a good mother and a lovely woman who passed on her height and generosity to Flick, even though the boy could barely remember her. I thought about Pa, watching him early in the morning. I could still remember his shadow, how others feared it but I only smiled up at the way he made shade for me while I played. The way he smiled in return, pushed back his hair and plucked me up from the ground to carry me around, just so proud. These were things I couldn't burden Slit with, the way I felt safe when Pa held me. I was sure he'd never felt the same thing. Goddess, I wished my failed War Boy had been grown up from a seedling in The Green Place. Maybe he'd have had a Ma and Pa like me, maybe he'd have known those comforts. But he'd have been a different person, would he not? I tried focusing on the sensory things, what I had long ago seen and touched. It's easier to absorb that way.
"Mmm. He was pale, so his face was always a lil burnt red from the sun. Him an' mum, couldn't have made two more different people even if you had clay in every color an' texture. His hair was like straw, the color and how dry it would get. He'd just buzz it off when it started touching his ears and let it grow in again. He shaved his face every morning, then spit-shined his boots. Useless, those old things, he must've walked a thousand miles in them. T'was like putting lipstick on a pig to try an' clean um up. S'pose it was just part of his routine. Too hard ingrained to break... He'd have hated you, Slit. He'd say Dune had no business anywhere near someone like you. Maybe he'd have warmed up, just not as fast as Mumsy."
"Well, he'd have had to deal with it. I'm not going anywhere."
He was so self-assured, so absolute in his words. That in itself might just have caught Pa's attention, might have helped him take Slit seriously. I felt proud for no reason, caressed his face and kissed it even. He squirmed but rolled over to look at me. What a lovely thing.
"Good. You know, the only reason he'd hate you is that you're kind of similar to what he was."
"Please don't tell me I remind you of your old man. I was just starting to be okay with being within reach of you naked."
"What? Heheh, would callin' ya daddy ruin the mood?"
He shifted and scratched at himself under the jacket as if he had ants chewing at his skin.
"Everyone back home called Joe Daddy and I've been having a lot of doubts about home lately, so yeah, it might bother me."
"Dune was joking, Slit. He was some kind of soldier. He had dog tags, scars inside and out, pretty much had no faith in people. Hell, he had bags ready just in case bridges got burnt and we had to leave the Many Mothers in a hurry."
"Fuck, people there used to burn your bridges if you pissed them off?"
"What? No. Actually, maybe, but it's mostly just an old metaphor."
I wasn't sure. I was so young when we left. In truth, I knew nothing by the time Mumsy and I absconded from our home, searching for a greener pasture. A newborn silence stalked us. We could hear the world breathe, and the poor creature Joe had led to his own oblivion was nearly asleep in my lap. We needed to move. Scorpions and snakes lived in these sands, things Mum had constantly reminded me to watch for during her years in the realm of the living. I couldn't be bothered, I was so content to stay and watch the fire die even as the icy grip of night closed in around us. In the quiet that followed my lack of will to move, Slit's brows slowly dropped and his eyes narrowed.
"Great flaming balls of Veeight!"
"WHAT? What?" I was so shaken by his explosion of noise that I wroth out from under him, prepared to lift Mum's lead slinger and crack off a shot at whatever made the man shout like that. He sat up, turning to look me in the eye with a kind of glint I had never seen before.
"I get the joke."
"How- are ya mad? Dune ain't told a joke." I had said nothing since recounting the memory of Pa to him. What was he on about?
"Clean fingers!" He spat, lips pulling into a tight smile against his darkly stained teeth while he rolled in the sand just roaring away in laughter, close enough to the dying fire that I launched a hand to stop him from burning himself. "Naughty mechanic!"
Took a second for me to get it too. He was talking about the joke I had told his fellow former War Boy, Phil, months ago. I laughed so hard I snorted, thankfully the tea was long drunk completely, or else I'd be shooting it from my nose.
We kicked sand over the last embers after he was through laughing so late from a joke I told and forgot at the start of our stay with old friends. Into Shirley, we crawled like pitiful creatures of the earth. Lately, he'd been hesitant to take his leg off, I noticed that and did what it took to get him comfortable. He had blisters. Goddess, he needed a better fitting socket. Sometimes, even after a year and more, that thing still gave his skin fits. It could easily have been the strain of our fun today, the tussle and the other crazy thing we indulged in, but I still felt he shouldn't have to suffer from this thing he had to wear just to walk. Maybe I wanted too much out of life. I wanted him to never feel pain again, something you can only hope for in an afterlife with her highness upon her throne of seeds. I simply wanted everything for him.
That night, he let me touch his less than half a leg, he praised a shine hand and fought sleep just so that he could tie our wrists together. I wondered if this was how Ma and Pa, two extremes, fell so hard.
"Would you like to hear more?" He said unto me, knowing the answer I'm certain. "About Nux," He clarified, How could I say no? He told me of a battle in a ring made of barbed chicken wire, how he and his best friend won a more comfortable place to sleep. I could hardly believe that these War Boys fought for as little as a place to close their eyes. It opened my own eyes. I fell asleep to his story and I dreamt of Ma and Pa behind bars, fighting each other. I'll never understand that strange dream, but my Ducky curled against me and his lips pressed to mine, that was easy to feel and easier to understand early in the morning.
"You need to scrub your reeking teeth, Duck." I tried to ward him off with a pinch and by pulling my head away. That only gave him my neck to slobber on.
"You stink too, Psycho."
Oh, he's handsy now. Give him something and goddess forbid he actually likes it, then he'll want it all the time. This is how I wound up a part of a nightly ritual, touching his face until he falls asleep. You can't complain too much when it's good for you too. Perhaps I could have accepted more of the catnip from Arddie. We never got that far this morning, too sore, the both of us. Never had pain been so pleasant. The world was turned on its head, I couldn't make heads or tails of it. He was all red from the crown of his head to the collar of where his shirt had hung around his neck. I was right, his hair had protected him.
"Want you in the shade today, Ducky. You're already burned."
"M'fine," he said, trying to get under my shirt again in this lazy way with his face. I pulled down my shirt, no, I was wearing his shirt. Anyway, I blocked him with a wall of tattered fabric.
"Duck, the sun doesn't like you. You're burned. Dune wants you to stay in the shade. We need to find a way to protect your melon from the cruel glare."
He huffed and puffed, scrubbing his already rough scalp into my neck and ignoring me so that he could enjoy himself against my legs. A Slit can be gentle when he's sore and tired, I've long known this but never applied it to the idea of this realm of bodies which mingle.
"Slit,"
"Huh?" He didn't give me a chance to continue from the place I started. I was pulled to him so close, and he licked at me. I didn't know what to think, what to feel.
"Thank you?" I said, unable to shape the words in any other way than a question. This made him stop, look at me with low slung brows and a slack jaw. "For... I don't know. Being with me. Touching me."
I felt more than heard him pull in a breath. "It freaks me out when you talk in first... S'not right. An' you touched me first."
I don't know how it wasn't his words but the tone in them which made everything alright. I swear, Mummy said 'I told you so' and then I wanted his lips. It was never a lovely body that he wanted, it was the rest, just to be and receive. It made sense, we're not pretty things, just living things. The older people used to talk about rain, feeling it fall all over their bodies. I think I know how it felt, just by having the War Boy all around me, like warm summer water. We couldn't stay that way, I had to escape the car and the gravity within it, I needed Mum's rifle and my long-lookers. He followed me, climbing up the stone and taking his usual place where the sun gave shade until the ruthless noon but this time, I joined him in the shadows and chose this life of mediocrity for the sake of comfort and joy. Oh, it was such a dangerous game, to lose sight of the road ahead. He clung so hard I could hardly hold up the long lookers to see the world around us. Finally, I got him apart from me long enough to try and have a good gander around while he got the mirror tree I kept here propped up and glimmering in the rising light.
Twice I had to look to the north-west, twice to be sure it wasn't an illusion manufactured by my sick skull meat, and I was certain that I saw a tower of darkness. Wilson had been hit, but by who? Smoke was rising from the dead worlds to greet us on this day, the date of a welcome rebirth for grown people with selfish desires and aspirations. I saw smoke rising in the West.
"That's coming from Wilson's," I said and all I can remember after that is bodies in motion.
An Eden was set aflame to show us that there was no time for frivolous things. Whether we thought Wilson was a friend or not, I loaded Mum's rifle and Ducky stepped on the gas to get there to see what had happened to cause smoke to rise from his near sacred territories. We had no time to watch for maggot food that day.
I wasn't great friends with Wilson, but I didn't deny his value. He can mend the things no one else could, why not see if he was still alive? Wilson was a man with no apprentice, a craft would die with him if he was left to fight a battle on his own. Who would be insane enough to bother him? Not me, that says something about whoever would. I only remember bits of that morning. The closer we came to the other territories, the more darkness we saw rising from the sands.
"Ducky," I cried. "Everyone... Everyone is burning."
I saw billows of black ascending from every settlement we knew and I saw Slit grow cold, tense, alien.
"It's a carpet bombing," He said, and I didn't understand the metaphor. Pa described carpet bombing to me once, on one of his bad days, this wasn't how he defined it. Slit was still speaking, he spoke of raids and how to attack from many sides to wipe out everything in an entire region, and I just could not retain the information as we neared Wilson's place. So much smoke.
So much smoke.
And... The end? On a cliff hanger? Yes, this is the last chapter of this installment. Don't worry, I have close to sixty more chapters summarized. There will be sequels, I promise. This just means it's the end of book one in a fan series I guess? Yeah, that sounds about right.
I want to give you a heads up. I'm editing this WHOLE fic so that I can get a copy privately printed for myself (I mean, if you want a copy, you can msg me on tumblr at Burn-your-face-upon-the-chrome and I will find a way to get you a copy of it.) BUT I want a physical copy of the longest fic I have ever written for myself.
In the editing process I want to fill in a lot of blanks that exist in this story, particularly between the chapter "Worth" and "Two Scavengers", eventually, those edited chapters may (almost certainly) trickle their way here to . I might also hack out some unnecessary info dumpery and rambling that I tend to do in order to get the thing to read butter smooth. Thank you for sticking with this. The sequel fic will be titled "The Road To Nowhere" and begin with the duo checking out what's left of Wilson's place to determine his fate. Keep an eye out for it.
