I don't know what's wrong with me what with starting another fanficion whilst busy with three others and all. This was meant to be just a short drabble where a nutter finds his corpse but then this happened and I have no idea where I'm going with it. It's probably going to be a multi chapter thing that ties into my other fiction.

Needs a beta reader.


When I was a kid I loved the sun. It was warm and bright and made little things in the dirt grow. Mama loved it too. We loved it because our skin was too dark to burn right away. Still, the sun made Mama's hide tough like a leather bag after many years working the fields.

When the water went sour and the raiders came we were the last to cook on the long march through the wasteland, looking for a new Green Place. We never found it.

"Ahh man. That was so long ago. It's just silly thinking about it Dune. Get a life would you? Lots of scrap to pick through. Glory, glory me so much scrap. All the war fodder finds me at the end. And all of their metal and trinkets."

I had watched the war party from the west scream back and forth over the past days. Chasing one of their own no less! How odd. How fortunate for me.

"Road wars bring only shiny treasures half buried in the sand for Dune."

There I was picking through the wrecks. Wondering idly what had ignited the conflict. I swore that I'd seen three whole war parties pour out of the canyon to hunt the war rig. So much death, so much carnage. Can't wait to tell mum all about it.

Things have changed since the Green Place, so have I. It was change or die so I made it my life to watch the wars and feast on the devastation. Not a bad life being a scav, but only if you get to the wreckage first.

Out here there were a couple of groups that made their way picking apart the vehicular corpses and expired battle fodder. I had to watch out. Keep a weather eye on the horizon for Rock Riders and Buzzards too. There are also those fiendish men who made moonshine. They often came to the call of war to pick at what was left behind too. All of them looking like vultures dressed in blacks. I hadn't stumbled across them today. If I had I'd have put some lead in them for skirting too close to my turf.

"This here patch of dust belongs to Dune!" A cry of challenge shouted to no one. Nothing but desert forever in any direction. Nothing but me, the corpses and the lizards. At least that's what I thought.

Something in the twisted remains of a wreck shifted. I could hear the metal grinding and the dry heaves of something living. Something besides me was alive out here? Rust and dust. Needed to keep a finger on my knife just in case a merciful slaying must be done.

I pulled my sled along. Heaping onto the pile anything shiny and worth taking as I made my way to the wreck. Smoke still rose in wisps from the mechanical remains. When I was close enough to inspect I snorted. Must have been the wind moaning. Nothing could have survived this. It was crushed in, twisted, and burnt. There wasn't even anything worth scavenging from it.

"Tisk tisk. Sad to say it mate. You're not worth the sand your laying in. Dune would be lucky to find a nut worth salvage."

A groan. A reply? Maybe a ghost. I circled the wreck once more. "Hello? Something living. Yeah? No?"

The groan came buzzing in my ears again, then came a wet gag like an engine sputtering. Ahh, look! Fingers poking up through the warped driver side window. I sniffed. Oh dear. The wreck may as well have been an oven. Whatever was inside was cooking or had already been roasted. I could smell the flesh sizzling and it wasn't an unpleasant smell. It made my tongue wet and my guts churn hungrily.

My mind might not have been what it once was but I had the good sense not to mistakenly eat a man who was still alive in a fit of hunger. I ignored my empty stomach and began pulling at the doors, the roof. Anything that looked busted up enough to get apart.

In the end I had to reach inside and start pulling out what remained of the seat piece by piece so that I could haul the body up and out. It was hard to lift him. He was heavy, yes, but there was too much difficulty. Even if he hadn't begun to shriek I'd have still guessed that he was caught on or pinned under something. Oh how he howled and yipped in pain, scratching down my arms and neck with fingers made of sloppy pulp which sloughed off onto my scarf and vest.

"Stop that! You want to keep cooking? Yes? No? If you want to keep simmering I'll just come back for a bite later!"

He stopped, but probably only because that had been the last of the will left in him to fight. Poor ducky. All cooked up and denied the afterlife their kind chase. Just as well, it's a false life after death anyway.

I had to crawl inside over his mangled lower half like a lizard into a bolt hole. "Ah, yes. Heres your problem."

The poor creature was pinned by a leg which was barely still there. The limb was all fused and cauterized by a fire that had engulfed the car but it was shorn off at the knee, crushed between the steering wheel and I'm not sure what. Nothing was where it should be in here. All mashed together and parts mingling that shouldn't. Only a little bit of skin and sinew kept his knee and thigh attached. I wasn't at all certain of how conscious he was although I doubted that he could even feel much at this point. It needed to be cut loose if he was getting out. I was wasting droplets of water and salt all over my skin just laying here half sprawled through this oven and my legs still hanging out in the wind. How the heat hadn't made him dead yet I'll never know.

"Slice slice. Then we'll have you out in the lovely sun. Least you won't be so fuckin-forkin heavy once we've whacked off this bum leg. Yes?"

Another whimper in response. He wroth a little too, which was perhaps a weak protest.

"Traitor... filth..." He uttered barely audible.

"Hmm. Filth yes, a traitor no. No one there for me to traitor," said I as my fingers plucked the blade from my belt.

The cargos had melted into him. It was a bitch to cut through where the synthetic material had started to cool a little. Had to slice up his pant leg and clear it away to see what I was up to. Cut. Cut. The flesh had been rendered into jerky. Nerves would be dead dead dead. So he felt nothing of the cuts to free him I'm sure.

Out I came first, then shoved my hands down under his pits and started hauling him up through the drivers side. His eyes shot open and another wail was let loose.

"Aww, hush now ducky. You'll drain what little life ya got left in ya hollering like that. Aw, shush shush."

I deposited him on the sand perhaps a bit clumsily. I wasn't kidding, the fuckin-forker was heavy. Dry sobs were seeping out of him now as I examined the blistering. My my. They were in their hundreds, huge and everywhere up his left side and the back of his head. All the burns were on the same side he was now missing a foot. Some of the ugly bubbles were the size of my fist and taught with sickly looking yellow fluid. I knew how it felt. God's greens did I know.

"Oh, look at your sorry face. That must have hurt." The most shocking detail wasn't even the burns, it was his face. Such brutal scarring was quite stunning to look at, like the grin of a reptile. It looked like a permanent smile even now as he lay there with half his skin melted off. He managed a true grin at my words. It was eerie and exciting to watch expressions form and fade from such a striking set of lips. A smile doesn't hide reality however, his must be a living hell.

I pulled out my blade once more. So much pain, so much blood. I had wished that someone would kill me when I was burned up by a cruel accident and then double burnt with the sun. Being forced to live was just terrible. Awful.

I pressed the razor shaft against his Adam's apple. It would be quick and I'd put his remains to use. He'd not be wasted, he'd give life and be redeemed of a past spent taking it.

"Valhalla." He hissed with reverence. Sensing his fate looming.

Valhalla. Joe's greatest lie. Poor boy wasn't going to a promised land beyond death. He'd go straight to the fiery lake for all that killin' he's done. So silly and brainwashed that he never knew the value of living.

It got me thinking about saving him from that flaming lake instead of cutting through the arteries like I should. After my burns had healed up I enjoyed living again; with a head that was on a little crooked but enjoyable life was.

"Hmm. To make a maggot farm? Or let new scars be made? Dune wonders how much of you is cooked up."

He mewled pathetically. Eyes pleading for respite.

"You think you could make it one more day? I could polish you up. Make you sparkle again. All you have to do is keep on breathing until we get back to my kip. Yes? No?"

No response. The blade was tucked away safe and I looked back to my sled. Now I had a choice. The scrap pile and the fun heavy things or the crispy war boy. I looked from one to the other. Well, I didn't need all of the shiny things. Or all of the studded hub caps. Just a few hub caps would do. Even if the war boy died he'd make a lot of maggots to eat. Couldn't really say no to that.

I had to go push the excess out of the sled and grab the tarp to roll him over onto it. I felt bad. His blisters were busting anywhere I gripped him too hard in the process of tugging him along and hefting him up onto the sled.

I tossed a few rags over his torso to protect his burns from the sun and used some bungee cord to secure him down, murmuring sorry here and there as I worked.

Now to fire up the big fan and get us sailing. The sled was -in reality- an airboat fan, parts of a pontoon boat and miscellaneous parts from salvaged cycles. The front end of a motor cycle was secured to the back with shoddy welding and a thousand lengths of scrap cloth tied around it. The handles of the half-bike had been replaced with a long wooden handle and served as the rudder. You could pretend you were sailing on the ocean in the evening when the dusk sky paints the wastes a pleasant shade of blue.

"Let me take you home Ducky. I'm sure you'll like it there. I do."

That said I pulled the cord and gave a satisfied sigh when the craptastic excuse for a motor wheezed to life again.


I'm going to be a jerk and reply to a review which for some reason wont show up when I click the link to my reviews on the site. I did however read it in my email

This review was submitted by Radio Free Death.

[mama's hide] - Since it's used in place of a name here, it should be capitalized. (I fixed that for you)

[There are also those fiendish men who made moonshine, they often came to the call of war to pick at what was left behind too.] - Remember that statements end in periods, not commas. There's two sentences in this one alone. (Fixed that for you too you helpful devil)

["Hmm. Filth. Yes. Traitor. No. No one there for me to traitor." Said I] - If there's a speech verb, it's not considered the start of a new sentence, so 'said' shouldn't be capitalized, and there should be a comma rather than a period inside the quotes. (And this. I really have no clue what you meant so I tried. I probably failed but I don't really care that much.)

I'm surprised Dune doesn't suggest to kill him, as judging by the description Slit's in very bad shape. She did say she was ready to kill someone out of mercy if they were suffering, and with Slit's leg and his flesh sloughing off his hands, I'm again surprised she didn't consider it, not even once. (Here, I thought I was pretty clear about the considerations Dune made about whether or not to kill him. I thought the fact that she had the blade to his throat was a good indication that she was deciding whether to cut his throat and use his corpse to farm maggots or to try patching him up. Since you felt it was unclear, I made a tweak or two. I'll make a note to say she's nuts so really, it's a moot point. What she thinks about doing versus what she actually does is pretty irrelevant. It's an intentionally fickle and flippant character.)

(FINAL NOTES: I don't care much about errors in fan fiction. Now if I were writing/reading an original novel with the intention of pushing the manuscript beyond the dreaded slush zone, THEN I'd actually care about erroneous grammar, punctuation, syntax etc etc. This is fan fiction. It's not an attempt at a best selling novel so, no, I won't be taking it seriously. I'm not even taking the structure of these notes seriously. It states on my profile page that I only do this fandom thing to empty my head.

In closing I'd like to say thanks, but on behalf of everybody here who has an adult learning disability and writes junk like this anyway- instead of leaving syntax criticisms, why don't you point me to a beta reader who would be willing to help me comb through this tripe.)