With Friends Like These: A Wasteland Verse of TrickyPixie83
This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #131. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price.
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Three fingers of analysis when just two will do.
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The sun burns hot, the sand grates my skin. I’m fried
Two suns, in truth
One eclipsed into a crown of fire hanging overhead
or a flame-lashed eye blindly staring down
I’m fried.
We trek across dunes to sun-bleached villages
The men inside all powder-white muscle and red meat
Scythes of bone for arms
I get the drop on one in his kitchen
Trigger-finger freeze
Something too domestic
He slashes; I shoot
He’s down and I bandage my bleed.
LoneWolf7862’s voice crackles in my ear like a radio,
“Got ‘eeeeeeeeeeeem!”
“I should’ve looked through the window first,” I reply
“To the windoooooooww, to the wall!!”
saintoffools is battling a berzerker in the square,
“I’m telling you these guys aren’t even touching me,
they’re not touching me at all!”
I pause to sort my inventory
Slip rings of power on and off my fingers
Seems silly I can wear only two
I hang back just to catch my breath.
LoneWolf7862 returns from scouting ahead,
“I’ve found The Way.”
It’s not the way, only a random Gigerian room
A button to press (ill-advised) at one end
I move forward to start this damned fight and
LoneWolf7862 puts a bullet in my back.
“Aw, come on,” I groan
“Sowwy! Just testing this gun.”
He drops a mender’s aura to make nice
saintoffools laughs.
I press the thing and watch the doors close
Run on scaffolds
Explode prong-footed beasts into radioactive clouds
“They can’t hurt me either, we’re I N V I N C I B L E,” LoneWolf7862 howls
Who’s “we?” I think
I try to run again, irradiated, and fail.
saintoffools doesn’t want to waste immortality
Throws himself at anointed men-machines
Takes on hordes of clattering, lurking fiends
I go down and wait for a comrade to hold a dragon’s heart above my neck
Kneeling on all fours like I might be sick.
Victory is ours
The prize a rifle of sickening light
Replicated, one, two, three
“Ooh shiny,” saintoffools mutters
Fires a constant beam at LoneWolf7862
LoneWolf7862 returns the favor; chrome walls glow gold
Their health remains red, robust.
I lose myself a moment
Train my own beam at LoneWolf7862
saintoffools turns a quarter to me
Lets loose a beam barrage
Me, scream-laughing,
“I take damage, I take damage!”
Strength and stamina draining to dregs
saintoffools, scream-laughing,
“I just wanted to make a pretty triangle!”
LoneWolf7862 just scream-laughing.
I limp through fog,
Geiger crackles reminding me to stay slow
Drink heavy water
Press my own dragon heart to my chest
We carry on
One resurrected mortal, two demigods
Seeking out The Way.
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Sara Clemens thinks too much about things, generally. They run a site called Videodame and retweet stuff on Twitter @thesaraclemens.
