ORIGINAL TITLE: Chimera
DESCRIPTION: Some original fanfiction based on the Fallout universe, depicting a tribe of ghouls calling themselves "Fingers-Without-Flesh" capturing a young woman. Was intended to be the introduction to a story about psykers but never managed to work it out. 1450 words. (minor edit for clarity)
"World-food-ash-bring," the Firetender ghoul said, and raised his hands to the sky. "Wash-flesh-Earth-fire. Give-People-Life."
The night sky was deep, but not empty, filled with a thousand little people fixed to the permanence. Ermengarde brought forth the things, the wires and batteries and sensors, all the things that were symbols of the Old-Machines-War. She tipped the bucket into the fire twenty feet below the Firetender, watching them tumble through the air as the Firetender intoned a prayer to the heavens. She stood on the wooden walkway above the well, her bare feet rocking back and forth, hearing the creaking noise.
In the darkness, to her right, she heard the panicked noises of the captive. "No-cry," she told the girl. "Much-longer-come-no-flesh."
The girl only sobbed harder, and Ermengarde gave her a disapproving look. They usually went willingly; but she was Fleshtender, and it was her duty to ensure that they were given the proper treatment, that they were made to understand, before they were consigned to the fire.
"Look-fire," she said, and lifted her head by her hair with one hand. "See-fire. Fire-burn-flesh."
"No!" the girl howled, and tossed her head around violently. Ermengarde breathed out, feeling the hot air curl around her in the dark, cool night.
"Bring-flesh-burn," the Firetender called. "People-pass-quick." He gestured to the sky. "Wait-want-flesh-burn."
"Fast-no-people-eat!" Ermengarde snarled. He was impatient, and she still had to do her duty. She looked back to the girl, her hair trapped in her fist. "No-eat," she said, and looked at the girl's wild eyes. "No-Life."
"No!" the girl cried again, and her bounds hands reached up to grab Ermengarde's frayed flesh, digging sharp fingernails into her wrists. Ermengarde frowned. This girl was younger than the others; she acted more rebellious, less understanding. The drugs worked less effectively on her? She hooked a finger around the girl's hands on her wrist and pulled, but she would not let go. With a deeper frown, Ermengarde looked down the girl's front and grabbed her shirt front, ripping it open. The girl gasped and, as expected, lowered her arms and hands to cover herself.
"Bring-flesh-burn!" the Firetender said, his voice growing anxious. "No-flesh, no-sun!"
The Fleshtender turned and shot him a terrible look. She knew how important his duty was, how vital to the tribe it was to burn the girl in the fires stoked by the Old-Machine-War. "No-fast," she rumbled, "no-eat, no-sun, no-Life!" she repeated, nearly hissing at the older ghoul.
The Firetender crossed his arms over the leather straps wrapped around his chest, and looked up at the sky, muttering a long string of supplication.
Ermengarde turned back to the girl, and looked down at her. Such perfect flesh she'd never seen before spilled from that shirt, and Ermengarde felt a heat rising in her chest. Jealousy, maybe, she knew she didn't look flawless. She lowered a hand to the girl's collarbone and traced a line across it with a stubby finger, gone above the first knuckle.
The girl jerked away and Ermengarde set her mouth in a line. "Rise-fire-Life," she said, "People-eat. Sun-rise, flesh-die."
"No!" the girl screamed.
The Firetender laughed, an unpleasant sound over the pit. Ermengarde looked back at him and shook her head.
"Please!" the girl screamed, and her knees clattered tightly together, wobbling on the walk. "Please! Don't put me in the sky!"
"Bring-flesh-burn," the Firetender said again, but this time there was a firmness in his voice, and Ermengarde did not want to hear that. She dropped the girl onto the boards and faced the other ghoul.
"Duty-sacred," she said, emphasizing the last word.
"Eyes-travel," he accused her, and she balled her hands into fists. "Heart-no-lies-Man."
Ermengarde would not normally have cared if the older ghoul called her names, nor would she have been bothered with his impatient attitude. This girl was not taking to the Jammer, like the others that they had sacrificed to the People. Ermengarde had tended the flesh of so many, she couldn't count them all. But she'd not seen someone so reactively opposed after a hit of Jammer in a long time, and it was a problem.
"Duty-sacred," she repeated, her breath hot in her mouth. "Jammer-no-work. Firetender-no-hear, no-see."
He stiffened in anger. She curled her mouth into a sick grin. Yeah, he understood that one. She called him out, implied he wasn't doing his duty.
"Fleshtender-leave," he growled. "Walk-leave."
"No-walk!" she snarled back.
The Firetender strode over the boards, creaking and shaking above the wide mouth of the well. He grabbed Ermengarde by her shoulder and pulled her close to him. "Pray-mercy," he said, so coldly that she felt her spine tingle.
"No-pray," Ermengarde said, firmly.
Behind her, the girl had gone still, and the crackling of the fire in the well was popping and snapping. Ermengarde could feel the heat rising from the opening, smell the burning acridity, and she could hear a small slick noise from behind her. She smiled.
The Firetender pulled her up by the straps on her shirt, brought her to his face. "Fleshtender-food-burn," he growled. She kept her eyes on his, looking through the white haze that covered them, and she laughed at him.
Behind her, the girl's bindings broke free with a loud snap and the Firetender looked sharply to see the girl raising her hands with a piece of wood in them.
Ermengarde registered the pain without noise. With nothing covering her back beyond leather straps, the wood penetrated her back muscle and exited through her ribs, aimed upward into the Firetender's heart. He grunted, looked down, saw the wooden plank erupting from Ermengarde and pushing into his flesh. Ermengarde reached down and grabbed the wood, pulled it forward from her own flesh, and jammed it up into his chest, right into his heart.
The girl let go of the wood the moment it went through the ghouls' bodies, and she thudded across the boards, disappearing into the night with little more than the sounds of bare feet slapping on the earth. Ermengarde removed the plank from her chest, wincing at the scraping feeling it gave her as it passed through her liver. She jammed it further into the Firetender's chest, even though he had died when it reached his heart.
Holding her front and looking out into the wastes, she moved to the edge of the walkway and stepped down. It was going to be a long walk, she knew, to get herself far enough away from the tribe, a long walk into the wilds with her liver torn to shreds and black blood bubbling up from her abdomen like a fountain that any creature would love to drink.
She couldn't stay. She was already condemned, for letting the prisoner get away, for the Firetender dying. Ermengarde did not want to die, not yet.
She stared up at the sky, the People staring back at her without any sign of their displeasure. Perhaps... perhaps the sun would rise on its own.
Her feet pounded the ground, breasts flying every which way in the ripped shirt, sharp rocks and dead brush crunching under the bare soles. She didn't stop, didn't bother to right herself, she just ran. The drug that the ghouls had given her made the world spin around her, a kaleidoscope of color and blurring trees, and she felt her stomach rebel against the sudden prolonged movement.
She ran, and the vivid purples behind the dead trees, the white stars stirred into a circle above her head, moved in patterns that only she could see. Her feet made strange noises, hitting the ground like a spring and pushing her up into the air with each step, and she felt like she was going to fly off into the sky if she didn't slow down. Her arms went out like wings, unconsciously.
She gulped the air, forcing it into her lungs, feeling the ice grasping at her insides. Violet trails outlined her breath as she exhaled, and her mind frosted with the crystalline coldness of the night. She stumbled, and went down, falling into a steep crater.
When she'd finally bounced to a stop, she shut her eyes against the swirling world above her and put a hand out, trying to find the ground, to push herself up. Her hand came across a smooth surface, and she opened her eyes to see a blackened skull grinning at her from under her fingers. An orange insect with a massive head uncurled itself from under the skull, and latched itself to her foot, jabbing her skin with it's enormous mouth.
She screamed, and her voice exploded from her chest into a million fragments of crimson paper, and her head flew apart at the seams.