Author’s Note:
This is an unedited, ongoing serial that will eventually be published in novel form. Plot/characters/elements are subject to change as it is being written. It’s currently in 1st person/present tense, but I may change it to past tense, excluding the first chapter which will act as an intro. Read at your own discretion and take note of story tags below.
Genre: Post-Apocalyptic sci-fi
Tags: prostitution, graphic sex, large age gap, violence, theft, drug/alcohol abuse, depression, rape, gang rape, cannibalism, murder, incest, child/infant death and abuse, general abuse, (more to be added as the story goes)
I'm lost.
In more ways than one—lost in time, lost to myself—but right now I'm literally lost in the centre of the badlands at the ass-end of the galaxy. I'm on Chornoboh-7, the last human colony before the empty disappointment of space... cannibals and rapists all but forgotten on their shitty, desolate moon. It took most of my credits to convince the scrappers to dump me here.
The dust is thick. It coats my tongue and makes it even harder to see in the weird piss-yellow light, but soon enough I spot a squat dark shape in the distance, too regular to be natural, and I trudge towards it.
Inside it's dark and crowded with the scum of humanity, reeking of sweat and desperation. It's a bar and I'm glad for it. I need a drink so bad I'm starting to shake.
The grain alcohol goes down like water and I ask the hunchback behind the bar for another. He looks at me right in the eye as he pours and I'm made to understand that he's the man around here who can get me anything I want.
What do I want? I want nothing. I want oblivion.
Lights go up next to the bar and I see a glossy white platform on the other side of a metal railing. I step closer as the platform begins to glow—it’s cleanest thing in the place. The crowd jostles and chatters around me, but I'm a rock, no one can move me.
Two men step out into the light, naked and completely shaved and powdered in white. The bigger one starts stroking his cock, expressionless as the other man goes down on his knees and reaches back to jab something at his asshole. It's a knife. The second time it goes in there's a spray of blood and the glowing white platform is clean no longer. I'm intrigued. Repulsed.
The wounded man doesn't even let out a sound, not when he cuts himself again, not when the other man kneels and thrusts himself into the wreckage. The gore pools beneath them, thick and dark and clotted. My hands tighten on the railing. I hear the words “necro blood fuckers.”
Finally the man being fucked seems to shake out of his stupor as his life runs out of him and he begins to struggle. There's a red handprint on the back of the other man’s bald white head.
I can see that the dying man’s pissed himself—urine cuts a clear streak in the blood. An estuary of body fluids. Semen is the next to mingle when the man pulls out and sprays the collapsed man’s back. A third man steps onto the platform, powdered white and naked, and I watch him and the other wrestle for dominance in the human soup for a moment before I turn away. I figure I know how it's going to go. I'm already jaded to it..
It’s just a performance, nothing else. It's not real. No one’s died. I know what that much blood smells like—that's something I can never forget. I carry it in my soul. I need another drink.
At the bar a dwarf grabs my dick through my pants and offers me a blowjob, but his price is too steep so I turn him down.
I've got enough credits for four more drinks. Not enough to get me to oblivion, but it'll take the edge off.
Maybe the bartender can see how hollow I am inside, or maybe he just wants a break from my carcass haunting his bar, but he sends a boy over to me with a wave of his hand. It's on the house—I’m never one to turn down charity.
In a cramped back room, the boy bounces up and down on my cock. His hole is so loose and sloppy that I could easily put both my nuts into him. But it doesn't matter, I'm getting close anyway and when he bounces a few more times, I cream his insides with a grunt. When he stands, some cum splats down on my belly and I wonder how much of it is mine. I watch him walk away and all I feel empty.
I've got to get going again. I'm almost out of credits and I’ll need a place to sleep out of the dust when I can't keep my eyes open any longer. So many years I've been floating, hounded by my ghosts, always on the move, sucking dick for credits when it's bad, getting my dick sucked when it's good. I don’t know how long I can keep this up, but so far my will to live is still placing bets and cashing in on my luck. What I do know is I'll keep wandering until something makes sense again. Until I'm no longer lost.
I'm back at the bar, my last credit burning down my throat to swim in my bloodstream and keep the ghosts at bay.
There's a man mopping the platform. You know, maybe it was real blood after all. It feels like I'm trapped in someone else’s dream.
The stink of the crowd is too much and there's nothing for me here. I turn to leave but the hunchback grabs my arm. The paper he places in my hand is creased and fuzzy with age, the ink faded. The picture of me is thirty years old. Now I understand the charity.
I shake my head. I'm not that man anymore—he shared the same fate as the people he didn't save.
No, heroes don't get lost. They don't chase oblivion. That’s just for the damned.
But I don't argue when I puts a few credits back in my account, credits in a dead man’s name. I nod in thanks but leave the old news article on the bar. I can't bear to look at it.
Without a backwards glance, I step out into the swirling dust to lose myself again.
