A man and his flag. Fallout Fanfic

Glad you're back, hopefully you continue to get better.

No need to thank me everyone, making the site a better place is just my natural instinct. 

Get out of hell within the next month or so

It looks like he has no nose and a really small face and mouth. 

The author was a snake oil salesman.

But you didn't actually finish by the end of the year?

https://chooseyourstory.com/story/officer-dick-gristle-

Five seconds to impact 

The harbinger of death glides away 

The thoughts of the reaper 

are of a hot meal and shower

The dropped metal hull descends 

carrying its world-ending poisons

Below a family sits in their white boxed house

having their unknown last meal

A father, hair slicked neatly and not a wrinkle on his shirt 

Perched sternly at the head of the table 

The patriarch, the grand king of the homely domain 

tyrant over three, at his beck and call

A mother, quiet and proper

(louder when Father leaves for work)

All pretty in her stepford dress

her fingernails as red as velvet 

A brother, small, loud, rambunctious

few thoughts beyond the cartoons 

or the occasional act of light violence

A tug on the dog’s tail, a cherry bomb in the mail 

A sister, the most pious of them all 

(surely she shall be saved with the Second Coming) 

Her prayers round out the dinner table 

nuclear family indeed 

Raising forks to their mouths 

one last time 

green beans, potatoes, leftover meatloaf 

hearty and nutritious, the TV blared 

“Don’t be a sleaze, buy BigMart Freeze!”

“Powered by rads but safe for the lads!” 

So says the man in the box, his teeth straight pearls 

his eyes alight with manufactured enthusiasm 

Father is flipping through the sunday funnies

the last ones that will ever be made

He decides that today is the day 

to finally ask for a small raise in salary 

Mother frets about her ugly hair and

the dull color of her nails

She wonders why she spent all those years

toiling away in a suburban Hell

Son pushes around the peas on his plate 

scolded a final time by Mother 

He wonders when the boring man will quiet 

So to watch childish brutality and death 

Daughter sits silently 

utters one last Hail Mary 

She knows, she knows, she absolutely knows 

that Jesus will save her 

The scene is set for the world’s end 

Four seconds to impact. 

The piercing sound of Lieutenant Smith’s whistle echoes across the endless trench, the one across from it, and the barbed wasteland that separates the two. Although I am Smith’s man, I pay little mind to the shrill piercing of its shriek, even as men all around me gather their weapons and dust off their uniforms in preparation for their march towards their ends. The soldier will follow the rest, yes he will, but I need him to take me away from this place before he goes, away from these hellish lands and burning eyes. I am burning from the fire he started under my feet, and I need him to put it out. 

As the artillery begins to sound in the distance while men clamber over the dirt walls towards death, I reach into one of the pouches of my tattered shirt, rummaging for the relief I desperately need. I claw for an eternity at the bottomless depths of that damned pocket before I finally produce what I need. Two small syringes, filled to the brim with the ambrosia of the gods, lay in the palm of my trembling hand. My entire body tremors with anticipation as I take hold of one of the needles and roll up the sleeve of my shirt, taking care not to drip any of the precious juices onto the unworthy soil. I carefully slide the point into one of my bruised veins, letting out a small grunt as I force relief upon myself. Have needles ever before felt so sweet and ticklish against one’s skin? The soldier remains seated in a dazed stupor, his eyes glassy and fluid trickling down the corner of his mouth. I leave him behind for the fields I long to be with. 

I lie in a patch of wheat and barley, a stalk hanging from the corner of my mouth as I idly nibble at its stem. There is nothing more delicious on the face of the earth that could possibly exist. I read a book, a good one, although I cannot make out its contents. A woman lies by my side, gently cradling my chest, infecting me with her warmth. I lean over to kiss her. I look into the woman’s face and see the girl the soldier shot. 

The soldier, the demon. The one who tore off my skin and wears it like an overcoat, leaving my flayed remains behind to dry under the sun, maggots burrowing under my exposed joints and tendons. The one who shot the girl who threw stones, tore her apart, ripped her to shreds with metal jackets. The girl, girl, girl. He did not even know her name, and still he had the audacity to shoot her. Smith told him to shoot, and so he shot. I hate him. I hate the demon who stole my skin and ruined me with his inhumanity. And I hate these hands that did not have the strength to strangle him. Some days I think back to when I could drink without fear, and I miss those days with all my heart. 

I tear myself away from such thoughts, attempting to force my mind back into the wonderful book before me, of which I do not know the subject. Wheat and barley once against enter my sight and scent as I force myself to look away from the grisly sight, but like my hands before them, my eyes betray me as well. My unwilling gaze is dragged back towards the limp corpse of the girl girl girl and I stare into her hateful dead eyes. 

The blood that trickles down the pale cheeks of the girl resemble thin red worms, making their way down the soil to burrow far underneath. They remind me of one of my friends, another of Smith’s men, before the demon shot the girl. We ate and sang and fought together, and one day he died. I remember the violent trembling his body undertook, his great muscled arms doing little but drag himself forward aimlessly. The worms were with him too, although not thin, but in great looping coils below his waist, leaving a trail of crimson on the soil of the wasteland as he slid forward, half of him steaming in a useless pile of offal behind him. He reached out to the soldier, but being a contemptible demonic coward, he ran away, leaving my good friend to die. HE ran away, HE did not help. He was never a friend. A drunk, a coward, an oaf. 

A slap pulls me out of my nightmare, although part of me wishes I were still there to face the guilt of the demon. Smith stands before me in his officer’s uniform, ever stiff and solemn.  “On your feet. Your unit’s going over next.” He barks, looking straight down into the eyes of the soldier. His brown eyes, wide and astonished- with perhaps a trace of fear behind his machismo. The soldier obeys- he is Smith’s soldier, after all- and ponderously rises to his feet as the ambrosia wears off. He lifts up his rifle, a thousand pounds in his hands, and braces it against his shoulder as he clambers up the side of the trench to peer over the side. The wasteland has been painted with men, crimson remains scattered all over the face of the earth. Stupid boys, who rushed forwards to die. Stupid, idiotic, foolish, pitiable, innocent boys. Sheep to the slaughter. But now it is the turn of the demon’s, led forward by the unending whistle of Smith, for he is Smith’s man. I glance at a corpse littering the ground before, and stare into his unending grey face. It is that of Smith’s.  

He blows the whistle and yet lies before me at the same time. What a fool I have been. I am not Smith’s man. It is that damned whistle and all the hate and viciousness of the feeling behind it, everything behind these thrice-damned trenches, the wastelands in between, and the oceans that lie far beyond them. All the brutishness of the world has risen and manifested in these two long lines, stretching from one end of eternity to another. I am not Smith’s man. We are both hate’s men. And once the grinder is done with me, he shall soon follow to be meat. 

The demon weeps for fear of death, but I weep with joy, for at last the demon will die and no longer terrorize this good earth. As I face my eternal ending alongside my hateful demon, I take out my last needle and slide it for the final time into my veins. As the soldier climbs onto the barren ground and faces his sins, I fly away back to the fields of wheat and barley to read a good book, unhaunted by neither a girl, nor a friend, nor a demon.

Feature comment on Woban Island

ok boomer

-- SpartacustheGreat on 12/29/2019 1:32:22 AM with a score of 0