[font size=1" color="#FF0000]LAST EDITED ON Dec-13-00 AT 03:13AM (GMT)[p]Well, this started as a Christmas story, but it split up and splayed into about 15 different tangents that needed individual development. When I put them back together, the Christmas aspect of the story was kinda gone, and I had this. Wierd, huh?
(This is a chapter one and a rough draft, so read for mistakes liberally, thank you kindly)
*****************************************************************
Among the Ashes
It was the same dream. The very same that had found Thomas Granger panting, sheets
drenched in cold sweat, clutching feverishly at thin air almost every night for the past six
years. In the back of his mind, he was almost aware of the fact that he was asleep. It
didn't matter. Even had he known it, he wouldn't have cared. He would endure every
horrible detail of it, he would abide the helplessness and the horror and the agonizing
and final defeat every night for the rest of his life if given the choice, for, in it's own,
twisted, macabre, way, the dream meant that he could see his Kaya again.
It started, as always, with the cabin. God, the cabin. In actuality, it was little more that a
sheet metal shack, it's walls pock-marked with rust, but they had refered to it
affectionately as their little cottage. How often over these past six years had he found
himself longing for the redeeming warmth that he had found within it? From it's hearth?
From *her*? ...
He stood outside the cabin door, dressed in a tan winter coat that had definitely seen
better days. The harsh wasteland wind tugged at the limp-hanging lining of the jacket,
and tousled his deep-brown hair. It didn't really matter, anyway. He had gotten into the
habbit of letting it go unkempt in the winter months, once it grew out down his neck. It
was pointless anyway, as the breezes and gales they got in the valley were always eager
to undo any progress he could've made; his hair, like him, was not the kind to be told
where to go. It didn't matter, anyway. Kaya said it made him look rugged.
He headed towards the cabin, whistling. Although his manner was obviously cheerful, the
song on his lips rang out against the walls of the valley sounding disconcertingly
ominous, almost like a dirge (he couldn't have realized it in waking, but the tune was
"Heaven", a pre-war ditty that he had once heard an old drunk stumble through a few bars
of in a shanty town pub). As he reached for the doorknob, something caused him to look
up at the side of the cabin in passing. What he saw didn't put him off, as it should've; in
dreams, little is as it should be. It seemed that the cabin had become elongated and stood
tilted at a rakish angle, as in a moment of intense vertigo. It was also much darker than it
should be. He took a couple of steps back, simply gazing at the steep and impending
figure that had been his abode. He was no longer whistling.
All of a sudden, the earth began to shake violently, a percussion orchestra putting a
sountrack to the cacauphony of his thoughts. After several seconds, the quake came to a
climax with the walls of his house falling out flat from where they had stood in an almost
casual manner, framing the space that used to be his floor. To his dismay, the cabin was
empty. No beds. No shelves. No stove. Something else was missing though... what was
it? He knew that it was something that he should've rememb... No Kaya. That was it. Her
presence was lacking from the place, and it was a more hollow feeling than he had ever
known to stem from his quaint, and usually inviting, domicile.
He gazed away from his empty... empty? No, something in the spot that his dwelling had
occupied caught his eye as he began to shift his gaze, and caused him to look back.
Sitting delicately in the center of the floor, a space he would have sworn a second ago
was unnocupied, was Kaya's music box. It had been a gift from her mother, who had
recieved it from *her* mother, and on down the line, to the point where you could trace
it back about 250 years, almost 100 years before the war. It had once been finely adorned,
yet it kept about it a manner of simplicity. The fine enamel that had once covered the
sides of the box was all but gone, eaten away by too many generations of rough handling
and, in the latter period of its existence harsh desert winds. It was evident to all that
beheld it that it had once been breathtaking in it's simple beauty, and with a small feat of
imagination and a good eye, it was possible to pick out a pattern of butterflies from the
pale wash of colors. The edges and corners were all gilded with red cords of velvet, but
it was painfully obvious that there had been a great deal of home repair involved over the
years in keeping them around. The box's fine ivory lid, in sharp contrast with the rest of
it's features, was in remarkably good condition. Although the lid had chipped and
yellowed slightly with age, the splendorous butterfly, inlaid in illustrious hues of green,
black, and blue, still had the same quieting aspect about it as the day it was made. He
picked up the music box and dusted it off, turning it over in his hands.
Granger gingerly operated the rusted hinges of the box, and it began to play it's melody. It
was "Silent Night", Kaya's favorite since she was a young girl, but there was something
wrong. The notes were playing in discord, and the song hung thick with an ominous air.
The sound put forth from the box was the very essence of a good thing tainted, and,
though it reminded him of Kaya, he could bear it no longer. He dashed the box against a
nearby rock, and it splintered into shards. It had just been that sound, that horrible sound!
He fell to his knees, and brought his hands to sift delicately among the wreckageof the
prized heirloom. What had he done?
It was then that he felt a strong, particularly chill wind on his back. He could not say
why, but Granger felt an incontrovertable urge to turn around. Unable to resist, he found
himself on his feet, facing opposite the miniature carnage he had wrought upon Kaya's
box. To his surprise, he did not see mountains in the distance, but an unbroken horizon.
This stretch of wasteland was virtually pristine, save for a few desert shrubs, and the sky
was a dead gray. Above, dark, foreboding clouds shifted over the skyscape with surreal
speed. It was a disquieting panorama, to say the least, and Granger's first instinct was to
seek refuge in the cabin, then realizing with dismay that the cabin was now little more
than an organized heap of tin and timber. He blinked. He blinked again.
When he opened his eyes the second time, he was startled by a human form standing
about a meter in front of him. She was obviously a human female, although the wretched
thing more closely resembled a ghoul. He looked the creature up and down a few times,
and realized with shock and great anguish that it was his Kaya. She stood before him in a
simple white gown, her once lovely form slight and emaciated. She held her arms a small
bit out from her sides, with palms facing out, giving her the distinct appearance of a
wraith. Granger wanted to go to her, to comfort and console her, to be with her and make
her better. He reached for her hand. Their palms met, and his passed through hers like a
mournful fog. He tried again, tried frantically, to touch her hand, to hold it, to raise it up
in his,
but to no avail.
"Kaya?'
The question was dismal and regretful, and he felt a twinge of pain, almost physical pain,
as he spoke it.
Their gazes met. Her eyes were almost comically large against her gaunt face, and
Granger's sorrow waxed anew as he was swathed in all of their tangible emotion. He
noticed that the wisps of her hair, once flowing chestnut tresses, barely covered the flesh
of her scalp. He felt bitter salt tears stinging his eyes.
"Thomas", she mouthed silently, her hand outstretched to him. He reached for it again,
again failed to find his mark. Once more he tried, once more his hand passed through
hers without even the slightest sensation. Kaya looked at him with shame and despair,
and mouthed his name once again, this time a question. He felt a drop run down his face,
two, the salty liquid dissipating on contact into the dessicated desert wastes. Her arm
returned to her side.
"Love you..." Her mouth formed the words. She brushed his cheek, and he felt only
wind.
"Kaya?", Granger asked, his voice breaking with a sob. "Wait..."
He took a step towards her, and she became that much farther out of reach. He took
another, and again she was moved. Was it not enough to bear that he could not feel the
sweetness of his Kaya's touch, but now he could not even be near to her? He couldn't take
it anymore. Granger broke into a run, arms outstretched towards her, but for every step he
took, she was two further away. He was openly sobbing as he ran, screaming her name.
"Kaya!" She looked at him with those forlorn eyes, mouthing his name , and silent,
impassioned pleas to cease his pursuit. He couldn't stop, he wouldn't stop. He had to be
close to her. Granger pumped his legs until they burned, but the only effect he achieved
was moving his beloved even farther away, towards the dead gray horizon.
At last, his body could take no more, and he stumbled, collapsing in a heap in the dirt.
He managed to get to his knees, with his head up, just in time to see her disappear over
the horizon. "Kaya?", he shouted one final time, his voice plaintive and permeated by
defeat, his clenched fist held tight to his breast,
"Goodbye, my love." The reply came faint and distant, but it was her voice.
Granger clutched his arms, hugging them tight across his chest, and wept silently into the
dirt as the odious melody from the music box redoubled and swelled around him.
***
Thomas Granger awoke with a start, clutching the frame of his military-style cot so
tightly that his knuckles were white.. Unfortunately, the frequency of his nightmare had
not done much to diminish it's effect over time, and his first concious action was to wipe
away the cold sweat that had pooled on his brow. It had been six long years since his
Kaya had succumbed to radiation poisoning, and each day an eternity. When Kaya died,
so had he, and the emptiness he felt in the days and months afterwards had all but
consumed him He had buried her next to an old knarled tree by to a stream in the
mountains near their home, and returned to the cabin, waiting in vain for death to fall
upon him and re-unite him with his Kaya. Ten months, he waited. Somewhere, deep
down, he was still waiting.
Granger placed a hand on the back of his neck, stretched, and looked around the
cramped, filthy before-time ruin that he now called home. The dim light from his
bedside lamp was far less than sufficient to illuminate his room in the twilight hours.
There used to be a streetlamp that had shined directly into his window, providing as
much light as he could ever need, and sometimes he almost wished that he hadn't shot it
out with a Desert Eagle so that he could get some sleep. Not like it mattered, anyway -
he was almost sure that he room looked better in the dark.
As his eyes acclamated to the darkness, he gave the place a quick once-over. Yesterday's
clothes were rumpled over the back of an old ratty chair in a haphazard fashion. A bottle
of Rad Scorpion tilted precariously in his shirt pocket, and it appeared that a good deal
of the precious alcohol had spilled during the night, pooling like so many tears on the
floor. Ironic, really, considering that tears were what he used it to cure. His hunting rifle
was slung over a crudely made rack on the wall , and there were broken glass and bullets
on the windowsill and all over the floor. Of course, the original window glass was long
gone, and the glass now present was apparently (he couldn't remember many details) the
remains of a number of broken whisky bottles, which he was fond of lining up on the
windowsill after he had emptied them and playing a little game of target practice.
Unfortunately, alcohol did seemingly little to improve his aim, and he groaned as he
noticed several bullet holes in the house across the street.
Thoughts concerning whether or not he had killed his neighbors flashed briefly across his
mind, but were drowned out rather quickly by a nagging urge for some breakfast. He
stood up pretty fast, and it was just then that he had the pleasure of discovering his
hangover. He sat back down, his head spinning. Seeing as how his the nearest IHOP had
been nuked one and a half centuries ago, and considering his present condition, he
quickly decided on what he would have for breakfast. He slowly slunk out of bed,
sauntered over to his clothes, pulled the bottle of Rad Scorpion out of his shirt pocket,
and treated himself to a little hair of the dog. With that, he returned to bed and promptly
dozed off
***
Several hours later, Granger was awakened again by the sound of gunshots. It was
nothing he wasn't used to; in fact, he had almost come to depend on the ususal gang-war
shenanigans to get him up on time. Now that the sun was up, and he was considerably
less tanked, he could fully see his crap heap of a house for the shitpile it truly was. The
sun played on the fragments of broken glass, throwing colored patterns of luminescense
against the walls and playing them over the entire room. Under normal circumstances,
it might have given an intriguing look to a place, but with the condition that his room was
in , it just looked strange and gaudy. A more thourough survey of the room than taken
earlier showed that the place to be in complete disarray. His endtable was turned over on
its side. A bottle of asprin and a tattered green ledger, the table's sole contents, lay on the
floor a few feet away; the asprin had spilled , and many of the pills had intermingled with
the broken glass near the window, making it look like someone had scattered some
sadistic breakfast cereal out over his floor. He heard a clattering in the corner, and,
casting his gaze there, he saw that a sizable chunk, one just a little larger than his fist,
had fallen out of the aging concrete wall.
"Eh, what are you gonna do?", Granger mused to himself, slowly extricating himself from
the warmth and comfort of the sheets. He gazed around at the wreckage of what must've
been an interesting night's events. It had occured to him earlier that he rarely got *that*
wasted, and that something must've been bugging him pretty bad for him to hit the bottle
so hard. Either that, or he was hanging out with Cy last night.( Cyril Bader, known to
those closest to him as Cy, was a fellow scavenger of Granger's, and was known around
town to be generally associated with scenes of mayhem such as this.) Well hell, he
thought as he threw on yesterday's clothes, it was probably a little of both.
Granger sat down on his bed, and put on his leather work boots. They were a good, solid
pair of boots, leather, with a steel toe, yet padded in such a fasion as to make them
moderately comfortable for everyday operations, and he had had to trade away his trusty
Desert Eagle to procure them. Luckily, he still had Old Steely, the magnum revolver that
he had held on to since the days before Kaya's death. Kaya...! His thoughts traveled back
to the nightmare, and to the days before the nightmare came into his life, before Kaya left
it. He wasn't even entirely sure anymore that those days hadn't been a dream as well, and
his only thought while he stared blankly around the ramshackle construct that he knew in
his heart would never be home was a deep and basal yearning for his old cabin. Sure, it
was smaller than his current dwelling, and it wasn't much to the eye, but compared to this
place, it was the model home, and He would take it any day over this dilapidated
before-times remnant. Around this time of year, Kaya would have the house all decked
out for Christmas, with sagebrush hanging in the doorway (missletoe was hard to come
by in the wastes), molerat with all the trimmings, and carolling in front of the fire. Sure,
their Christmases were nothing fancy, but they were the first real Christmas celebrations
he had ever had, and they were with the one person in the world that he loved the most. It
was that way with everything when she was around. She had a special kind of magic,on
that transcended bad days, bad moods, and hard times, and filled his life with a simplistic
joy that , for once in his life, had made him complete. With Kaya gone from his home,
the home was gone, too. It was an now just another empty house full of empty memories
that he could never get back. After the first ten months of wretched self-pity had
subsided, the empty house, once so very alive, fostered in him a new emotion: longing. A
longing to touch her, to hear her voice, a deep and insatiable longing to be with her again,
and it tore his very soul asunder. One day, he just couldn't stand it anymore. He went to
her grave early in the morning to lay fresh flowers, pocketed old steely and as much food
as his dejected mind thought to carry, and set out to the west, not looking back. Over the
years, he had traveled with caravans among so many setllements on the wastes that he
had lost his bearings, and now he couldn't get back to the cabin if he tried. Besides the
loss of Kaya, it was the one thing in his life he lamented the most.
Snapping out of this divergent couse of mind, Granger made a vain attempt to trace his
train of thought back to where it had started. Cabin... House... Nightmare.... Gun... gun?
Was that it? No, but while he was thinking about it, he reached under his pillow and
pulled out Old Steely, jammed it into his ankle holster, and then walked across the room
and slung his hunting rifle. He stopped, arms akimbo, and rubbed his unshaven chin with
one hand. Yes, the place certainly was a mess.
*That* was what he had been thinking about! Grumbling , he righted the upturned table,
bending the ledger in two and crudely thrusting it into his pocket. He shuffled everything
else on the floor - shells, pills, glass, and whatever miscellaneous junk was lying around -
into a hole in the his floorboards. He hadn't shaved, but he had already spent the better
part of an hour (with which he could've been getting ready for work) thinking about
*her*. It was the same story every morning, and it was a good thing that the job
description for desert scavenger included flexible hours, because otherwise he would be
out of a job, and charity was an even rarer commodity on the wastes than common sense.
Taking one last look around the rather shabby looking domicile before he left, Granger
remembered, in contrast, how neat and homey Kaya had always kept the cabin. "Well,
shi-it!" said Granger annoyedly, glancing once again at the quarters he kept, "Here we go
again!"
With that, Granger took 3 more long swigs at his bottle of Rad Scorpion, hook-shotting
his empty bottle into the hole in the floor and closing the door behing him as he exited
onto the street.
*****************************************************************
Well, let me know what'cha think. (Plz keep in mind, this is only a rough draft, so don't go spouting off with anything that will hurt my delicate little feelings or I may have to give you a parking cone suppository
-Yamu
(P.S.-What delicate little feelings? I am a tower of masculinity!)
KNEEL BEFORE MY AWESOME POWER, MORTAL! Please? Pretty please?
(This is a chapter one and a rough draft, so read for mistakes liberally, thank you kindly)
*****************************************************************
Among the Ashes
It was the same dream. The very same that had found Thomas Granger panting, sheets
drenched in cold sweat, clutching feverishly at thin air almost every night for the past six
years. In the back of his mind, he was almost aware of the fact that he was asleep. It
didn't matter. Even had he known it, he wouldn't have cared. He would endure every
horrible detail of it, he would abide the helplessness and the horror and the agonizing
and final defeat every night for the rest of his life if given the choice, for, in it's own,
twisted, macabre, way, the dream meant that he could see his Kaya again.
It started, as always, with the cabin. God, the cabin. In actuality, it was little more that a
sheet metal shack, it's walls pock-marked with rust, but they had refered to it
affectionately as their little cottage. How often over these past six years had he found
himself longing for the redeeming warmth that he had found within it? From it's hearth?
From *her*? ...
He stood outside the cabin door, dressed in a tan winter coat that had definitely seen
better days. The harsh wasteland wind tugged at the limp-hanging lining of the jacket,
and tousled his deep-brown hair. It didn't really matter, anyway. He had gotten into the
habbit of letting it go unkempt in the winter months, once it grew out down his neck. It
was pointless anyway, as the breezes and gales they got in the valley were always eager
to undo any progress he could've made; his hair, like him, was not the kind to be told
where to go. It didn't matter, anyway. Kaya said it made him look rugged.
He headed towards the cabin, whistling. Although his manner was obviously cheerful, the
song on his lips rang out against the walls of the valley sounding disconcertingly
ominous, almost like a dirge (he couldn't have realized it in waking, but the tune was
"Heaven", a pre-war ditty that he had once heard an old drunk stumble through a few bars
of in a shanty town pub). As he reached for the doorknob, something caused him to look
up at the side of the cabin in passing. What he saw didn't put him off, as it should've; in
dreams, little is as it should be. It seemed that the cabin had become elongated and stood
tilted at a rakish angle, as in a moment of intense vertigo. It was also much darker than it
should be. He took a couple of steps back, simply gazing at the steep and impending
figure that had been his abode. He was no longer whistling.
All of a sudden, the earth began to shake violently, a percussion orchestra putting a
sountrack to the cacauphony of his thoughts. After several seconds, the quake came to a
climax with the walls of his house falling out flat from where they had stood in an almost
casual manner, framing the space that used to be his floor. To his dismay, the cabin was
empty. No beds. No shelves. No stove. Something else was missing though... what was
it? He knew that it was something that he should've rememb... No Kaya. That was it. Her
presence was lacking from the place, and it was a more hollow feeling than he had ever
known to stem from his quaint, and usually inviting, domicile.
He gazed away from his empty... empty? No, something in the spot that his dwelling had
occupied caught his eye as he began to shift his gaze, and caused him to look back.
Sitting delicately in the center of the floor, a space he would have sworn a second ago
was unnocupied, was Kaya's music box. It had been a gift from her mother, who had
recieved it from *her* mother, and on down the line, to the point where you could trace
it back about 250 years, almost 100 years before the war. It had once been finely adorned,
yet it kept about it a manner of simplicity. The fine enamel that had once covered the
sides of the box was all but gone, eaten away by too many generations of rough handling
and, in the latter period of its existence harsh desert winds. It was evident to all that
beheld it that it had once been breathtaking in it's simple beauty, and with a small feat of
imagination and a good eye, it was possible to pick out a pattern of butterflies from the
pale wash of colors. The edges and corners were all gilded with red cords of velvet, but
it was painfully obvious that there had been a great deal of home repair involved over the
years in keeping them around. The box's fine ivory lid, in sharp contrast with the rest of
it's features, was in remarkably good condition. Although the lid had chipped and
yellowed slightly with age, the splendorous butterfly, inlaid in illustrious hues of green,
black, and blue, still had the same quieting aspect about it as the day it was made. He
picked up the music box and dusted it off, turning it over in his hands.
Granger gingerly operated the rusted hinges of the box, and it began to play it's melody. It
was "Silent Night", Kaya's favorite since she was a young girl, but there was something
wrong. The notes were playing in discord, and the song hung thick with an ominous air.
The sound put forth from the box was the very essence of a good thing tainted, and,
though it reminded him of Kaya, he could bear it no longer. He dashed the box against a
nearby rock, and it splintered into shards. It had just been that sound, that horrible sound!
He fell to his knees, and brought his hands to sift delicately among the wreckageof the
prized heirloom. What had he done?
It was then that he felt a strong, particularly chill wind on his back. He could not say
why, but Granger felt an incontrovertable urge to turn around. Unable to resist, he found
himself on his feet, facing opposite the miniature carnage he had wrought upon Kaya's
box. To his surprise, he did not see mountains in the distance, but an unbroken horizon.
This stretch of wasteland was virtually pristine, save for a few desert shrubs, and the sky
was a dead gray. Above, dark, foreboding clouds shifted over the skyscape with surreal
speed. It was a disquieting panorama, to say the least, and Granger's first instinct was to
seek refuge in the cabin, then realizing with dismay that the cabin was now little more
than an organized heap of tin and timber. He blinked. He blinked again.
When he opened his eyes the second time, he was startled by a human form standing
about a meter in front of him. She was obviously a human female, although the wretched
thing more closely resembled a ghoul. He looked the creature up and down a few times,
and realized with shock and great anguish that it was his Kaya. She stood before him in a
simple white gown, her once lovely form slight and emaciated. She held her arms a small
bit out from her sides, with palms facing out, giving her the distinct appearance of a
wraith. Granger wanted to go to her, to comfort and console her, to be with her and make
her better. He reached for her hand. Their palms met, and his passed through hers like a
mournful fog. He tried again, tried frantically, to touch her hand, to hold it, to raise it up
in his,
but to no avail.
"Kaya?'
The question was dismal and regretful, and he felt a twinge of pain, almost physical pain,
as he spoke it.
Their gazes met. Her eyes were almost comically large against her gaunt face, and
Granger's sorrow waxed anew as he was swathed in all of their tangible emotion. He
noticed that the wisps of her hair, once flowing chestnut tresses, barely covered the flesh
of her scalp. He felt bitter salt tears stinging his eyes.
"Thomas", she mouthed silently, her hand outstretched to him. He reached for it again,
again failed to find his mark. Once more he tried, once more his hand passed through
hers without even the slightest sensation. Kaya looked at him with shame and despair,
and mouthed his name once again, this time a question. He felt a drop run down his face,
two, the salty liquid dissipating on contact into the dessicated desert wastes. Her arm
returned to her side.
"Love you..." Her mouth formed the words. She brushed his cheek, and he felt only
wind.
"Kaya?", Granger asked, his voice breaking with a sob. "Wait..."
He took a step towards her, and she became that much farther out of reach. He took
another, and again she was moved. Was it not enough to bear that he could not feel the
sweetness of his Kaya's touch, but now he could not even be near to her? He couldn't take
it anymore. Granger broke into a run, arms outstretched towards her, but for every step he
took, she was two further away. He was openly sobbing as he ran, screaming her name.
"Kaya!" She looked at him with those forlorn eyes, mouthing his name , and silent,
impassioned pleas to cease his pursuit. He couldn't stop, he wouldn't stop. He had to be
close to her. Granger pumped his legs until they burned, but the only effect he achieved
was moving his beloved even farther away, towards the dead gray horizon.
At last, his body could take no more, and he stumbled, collapsing in a heap in the dirt.
He managed to get to his knees, with his head up, just in time to see her disappear over
the horizon. "Kaya?", he shouted one final time, his voice plaintive and permeated by
defeat, his clenched fist held tight to his breast,
"Goodbye, my love." The reply came faint and distant, but it was her voice.
Granger clutched his arms, hugging them tight across his chest, and wept silently into the
dirt as the odious melody from the music box redoubled and swelled around him.
***
Thomas Granger awoke with a start, clutching the frame of his military-style cot so
tightly that his knuckles were white.. Unfortunately, the frequency of his nightmare had
not done much to diminish it's effect over time, and his first concious action was to wipe
away the cold sweat that had pooled on his brow. It had been six long years since his
Kaya had succumbed to radiation poisoning, and each day an eternity. When Kaya died,
so had he, and the emptiness he felt in the days and months afterwards had all but
consumed him He had buried her next to an old knarled tree by to a stream in the
mountains near their home, and returned to the cabin, waiting in vain for death to fall
upon him and re-unite him with his Kaya. Ten months, he waited. Somewhere, deep
down, he was still waiting.
Granger placed a hand on the back of his neck, stretched, and looked around the
cramped, filthy before-time ruin that he now called home. The dim light from his
bedside lamp was far less than sufficient to illuminate his room in the twilight hours.
There used to be a streetlamp that had shined directly into his window, providing as
much light as he could ever need, and sometimes he almost wished that he hadn't shot it
out with a Desert Eagle so that he could get some sleep. Not like it mattered, anyway -
he was almost sure that he room looked better in the dark.
As his eyes acclamated to the darkness, he gave the place a quick once-over. Yesterday's
clothes were rumpled over the back of an old ratty chair in a haphazard fashion. A bottle
of Rad Scorpion tilted precariously in his shirt pocket, and it appeared that a good deal
of the precious alcohol had spilled during the night, pooling like so many tears on the
floor. Ironic, really, considering that tears were what he used it to cure. His hunting rifle
was slung over a crudely made rack on the wall , and there were broken glass and bullets
on the windowsill and all over the floor. Of course, the original window glass was long
gone, and the glass now present was apparently (he couldn't remember many details) the
remains of a number of broken whisky bottles, which he was fond of lining up on the
windowsill after he had emptied them and playing a little game of target practice.
Unfortunately, alcohol did seemingly little to improve his aim, and he groaned as he
noticed several bullet holes in the house across the street.
Thoughts concerning whether or not he had killed his neighbors flashed briefly across his
mind, but were drowned out rather quickly by a nagging urge for some breakfast. He
stood up pretty fast, and it was just then that he had the pleasure of discovering his
hangover. He sat back down, his head spinning. Seeing as how his the nearest IHOP had
been nuked one and a half centuries ago, and considering his present condition, he
quickly decided on what he would have for breakfast. He slowly slunk out of bed,
sauntered over to his clothes, pulled the bottle of Rad Scorpion out of his shirt pocket,
and treated himself to a little hair of the dog. With that, he returned to bed and promptly
dozed off
***
Several hours later, Granger was awakened again by the sound of gunshots. It was
nothing he wasn't used to; in fact, he had almost come to depend on the ususal gang-war
shenanigans to get him up on time. Now that the sun was up, and he was considerably
less tanked, he could fully see his crap heap of a house for the shitpile it truly was. The
sun played on the fragments of broken glass, throwing colored patterns of luminescense
against the walls and playing them over the entire room. Under normal circumstances,
it might have given an intriguing look to a place, but with the condition that his room was
in , it just looked strange and gaudy. A more thourough survey of the room than taken
earlier showed that the place to be in complete disarray. His endtable was turned over on
its side. A bottle of asprin and a tattered green ledger, the table's sole contents, lay on the
floor a few feet away; the asprin had spilled , and many of the pills had intermingled with
the broken glass near the window, making it look like someone had scattered some
sadistic breakfast cereal out over his floor. He heard a clattering in the corner, and,
casting his gaze there, he saw that a sizable chunk, one just a little larger than his fist,
had fallen out of the aging concrete wall.
"Eh, what are you gonna do?", Granger mused to himself, slowly extricating himself from
the warmth and comfort of the sheets. He gazed around at the wreckage of what must've
been an interesting night's events. It had occured to him earlier that he rarely got *that*
wasted, and that something must've been bugging him pretty bad for him to hit the bottle
so hard. Either that, or he was hanging out with Cy last night.( Cyril Bader, known to
those closest to him as Cy, was a fellow scavenger of Granger's, and was known around
town to be generally associated with scenes of mayhem such as this.) Well hell, he
thought as he threw on yesterday's clothes, it was probably a little of both.
Granger sat down on his bed, and put on his leather work boots. They were a good, solid
pair of boots, leather, with a steel toe, yet padded in such a fasion as to make them
moderately comfortable for everyday operations, and he had had to trade away his trusty
Desert Eagle to procure them. Luckily, he still had Old Steely, the magnum revolver that
he had held on to since the days before Kaya's death. Kaya...! His thoughts traveled back
to the nightmare, and to the days before the nightmare came into his life, before Kaya left
it. He wasn't even entirely sure anymore that those days hadn't been a dream as well, and
his only thought while he stared blankly around the ramshackle construct that he knew in
his heart would never be home was a deep and basal yearning for his old cabin. Sure, it
was smaller than his current dwelling, and it wasn't much to the eye, but compared to this
place, it was the model home, and He would take it any day over this dilapidated
before-times remnant. Around this time of year, Kaya would have the house all decked
out for Christmas, with sagebrush hanging in the doorway (missletoe was hard to come
by in the wastes), molerat with all the trimmings, and carolling in front of the fire. Sure,
their Christmases were nothing fancy, but they were the first real Christmas celebrations
he had ever had, and they were with the one person in the world that he loved the most. It
was that way with everything when she was around. She had a special kind of magic,on
that transcended bad days, bad moods, and hard times, and filled his life with a simplistic
joy that , for once in his life, had made him complete. With Kaya gone from his home,
the home was gone, too. It was an now just another empty house full of empty memories
that he could never get back. After the first ten months of wretched self-pity had
subsided, the empty house, once so very alive, fostered in him a new emotion: longing. A
longing to touch her, to hear her voice, a deep and insatiable longing to be with her again,
and it tore his very soul asunder. One day, he just couldn't stand it anymore. He went to
her grave early in the morning to lay fresh flowers, pocketed old steely and as much food
as his dejected mind thought to carry, and set out to the west, not looking back. Over the
years, he had traveled with caravans among so many setllements on the wastes that he
had lost his bearings, and now he couldn't get back to the cabin if he tried. Besides the
loss of Kaya, it was the one thing in his life he lamented the most.
Snapping out of this divergent couse of mind, Granger made a vain attempt to trace his
train of thought back to where it had started. Cabin... House... Nightmare.... Gun... gun?
Was that it? No, but while he was thinking about it, he reached under his pillow and
pulled out Old Steely, jammed it into his ankle holster, and then walked across the room
and slung his hunting rifle. He stopped, arms akimbo, and rubbed his unshaven chin with
one hand. Yes, the place certainly was a mess.
*That* was what he had been thinking about! Grumbling , he righted the upturned table,
bending the ledger in two and crudely thrusting it into his pocket. He shuffled everything
else on the floor - shells, pills, glass, and whatever miscellaneous junk was lying around -
into a hole in the his floorboards. He hadn't shaved, but he had already spent the better
part of an hour (with which he could've been getting ready for work) thinking about
*her*. It was the same story every morning, and it was a good thing that the job
description for desert scavenger included flexible hours, because otherwise he would be
out of a job, and charity was an even rarer commodity on the wastes than common sense.
Taking one last look around the rather shabby looking domicile before he left, Granger
remembered, in contrast, how neat and homey Kaya had always kept the cabin. "Well,
shi-it!" said Granger annoyedly, glancing once again at the quarters he kept, "Here we go
again!"
With that, Granger took 3 more long swigs at his bottle of Rad Scorpion, hook-shotting
his empty bottle into the hole in the floor and closing the door behing him as he exited
onto the street.
*****************************************************************
Well, let me know what'cha think. (Plz keep in mind, this is only a rough draft, so don't go spouting off with anything that will hurt my delicate little feelings or I may have to give you a parking cone suppository
-Yamu
(P.S.-What delicate little feelings? I am a tower of masculinity!)
KNEEL BEFORE MY AWESOME POWER, MORTAL! Please? Pretty please?
