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)
It takes me a few minutes to free the pipe from the side of the Argonaus tanker and when I pull it out, it’s a hell of a lot heavier than I thought it would be. I grind my teeth, keenly reminded of my years, and tug hard on the pipe, dragging it slowly between the rows of young corn stalks, careful not to disturb the plants. By the time I’m done, I’m out of breath and dripping with sweat. The worst part is I’ve got a shitload of dust in my eyes and I can barely see—I still feel like a fucking idiot for losing my new goggles to that little bastard Chirri in last night’s card game. I wonder what Pytre would think of one of his novices sneaking out to gamble and drink with the likes of me.
Pytre. My mood’s been shit since I woke up and it’s not getting any better.
I shake my head and lift the nozzle to the side of the reservoir, pushing it into the port and locking it into place. After I turn the spigot, I lean against the side of the big tank to wait, the metal nice and cool through my damp shirt. I see there’s a leak, a tiny nick in the seal or something, and the water comes out as vapour. A small rainbow shimmers in front of the cloud of mist—a rare sight on this shitty desert moon—but there’s no red in it. I know it’s because of something in Chornoboh-7's atmosphere, but it bothers me. It’s not a real rainbow… Not like the ones back on Earth.
I take in a deep breath to sigh my nostalgia and regret it instantly when I get a good snoutful of something awful. Fuck, the water stinks. Grey water, my ass… more like dark-grey water.
“That’s not good,” says a shrill voice to my right and I look over at Ghest who presses a finger against the escaping spray. All that does is split it in two, making the ghostly rainbow double itself. He shakes his head. “We can’t afford to lose water like this.”
“Relax, padre. It’s not that much.”
“Any amount is a waste,” Ghest says with a deep frown. He’s a sickly-looking thing with crusted chalky spots on his otherwise shiny bald head and greenish-blue bruises beneath his bulging eyes and it might be my imagination but he always smells faintly of piss. He’s the oldest Rimer I’ve ever seen, and I doubt he’s long for this life.
He keeps standing there with his finger on the leak, a sour look on his face, until the reservoir is full, then he steps back and wipes his hand on his robe as I shut off the water. His finger leaves a brown smear on his threadbare robes and I make a mental note not to shake his hand.
The old cultist follows me to the tanker as I drag the pipe back and refit it to the ship’s side. For a moment I think the tanker pilot is just going to tell poor Ghest to go fuck himself when he complains about the pipe leak… but then Ghest says something in a low voice as he takes a small green bottle out of his seed bag. I smile to myself as the bottle changes hands, the man enthusiastically agreeing to get the pipe fixed. Seems pious ol’ Ghest isn’t above bribery.
The Rimer steps back and I bang on the side of the tanker. Moving back, I close my eyes to wait until the tanker is airborne—the dust is hellishly thick, even this close to the fields. The desert, always encroaching, always there waiting to smother the greenery with its dirty yellow dust. The Disciples of Rime have to work around the clock to keep the desert from taking over. I wonder why the hell they stay here when there are dozens of inhabitable planets and moons that aren’t half as crappy as this one.
“You’re leaving, then?” Ghest says as we walk back towards the small huddle of tents. I can hear eagerness in his oddly high-pitched voice. He’ll be glad to see the back of me. I know most of them will… one in particular. Damn you.
“Yeah. I just need my bag and I’m out of here,” I say gruffly, but there is something else I want. I already know the answer to my question, but I ask it anyway. I have to.
“I want to see Pytre,” I say, not meeting Ghest’s penetrating glare. “And thank him for saving my ass.” Truth be told, I’m haunted by those brief few moments when he was in my arms, those big eyes full of tears and conflict.
“He’s deep in a prayer cycle,” Ghest says, his words curt.
“Fair enough,” I say quietly, feeling relieved and disappointed. I turn away.
Pytre would never have come with me anyway.
+++
I trade my pilfered liquor for travelling supplies at the general store, depositing the extra credits, then wind my way through Gulchtown, intent on finding a tavern. After a few dead-ends in the crumbling, yellow-brick town, I come across a two-story building made out of scavenged colonial ship plating. Above the door is a hand-painted picture of a pail with a long handle sticking out of it, the details worn away by the constant scrub of dust storms. I hear music, folksy and cheerful, but it’s the clink of a bottle that pulls me through the open door.
The place is near dead. At the back is a man without a shirt dandling a skinny boy on his knee. From the look on the man’s grizzled face, it’s clear the boy’s hands are busy beneath the table’s edge. A woman leans over the staircase banister, her breasts bare and nipples dyed a garish pink. As I cross the floor to the bar, the woman winks at me, lifting her skirt to show me her dick, and I give her a friendly wink back. I can easily afford her and I’m tempted—maybe she can clear my head.
“We’come to the Butter Churn,” says the rangy old man behind the bar. His moustache is shaved in the centre, a style long out of fashion in the rest of the galaxy, and he stares at me unblinking, his blue eyes wary.
“A butter churn? Is that what the sign is out front?” I say, as I take a seat.
“Yeah, what of’t?”
“Nothing.” I saw a churn in a museum when I was a boy—the same can’t be said of whoever painted the sign, but I decide to keep my opinions to myself. “Whiskey.”
The man nods and pulls a dark-brown bottle off the shelf, pouring a generous snit of liquor in a chipped glass. The bartender’s still eyeballing me as I down the drink in one swallow. “Whiskey,” I say again.
His nostrils flare and he pours another, and I see something in his eyes I don’t like: recognition. Before I can lift the whiskey to my lips, he leans over and hawks into it, the spit opaque and lumpy as it swirls slowly to the bottom of the glass. I watch it settle. Yeah, I hate being called a hero, but when someone sees me as I truly am… well, it’s not easy to swallow either, no matter how well-deserved it is.
“You left my sister and her babies to die,” he says, his tone as ugly as he is.
I meet his gaze, steeling myself for more. It’s been forty years, but I can still see them every time I close my eyes, a nightmare on perpetual repeat.
Men and women with mouths open in screams that I can’t hear, babies lifted above the throng… “Look at the children! You can’t leave the children!” A crescendo of pleas all around me, trapped within the thick walls of the ship, fists pounding bulkheads, begging and crying for me to let one more person in, just… one… more.
Outside, babies dropped in the crush of bodies, trampled on. Three soldiers stayed behind to make sure no one tried to pry the hatch open again—they lash out at the crowd with their batons, but the throng is too wild. One looks over his shoulder and stares at me through the viewport for a moment—the expression on his young face is one of sheer terror. He’s pulled into the crowd and I lose sight of him. I turn away. They’re all dead anyway.
“Get everyone stowed away,” I shout above the weeping and pleading.
“Clear the way!” The loadmaster has tears streaming down his cheeks as he follows my orders. He pushes the lucky winners of the lottery down the corridor towards the cramped quarters they’ll share for the next sixteen months as we flee the solar system. Forty thousand souls across twenty-three ships—the entire human race lifted into the sky while five billion are left to burn.
My eyes had been dry, but I remember my hands had trembled for days.
“You a goddamn coward,” the bartender says.
I nod—there’s not a fucking thing I can say that will make any difference. I’m either the man who saved the human race… or the coward who abandoned it. I keep holding his gaze, and I don’t know what he sees, but his expression changes. It softens, just a touch. Just enough. I don’t know if I’m relieved or disappointed.
Pushing the glass aside, I place a half-bottle of Rimer’s chartreuse on the bar. It’s my last one but I don’t care. I need a drink and I don’t think I can stomach any more of the cultists’ green rotgut. “Whiskey,” I say, pushing the bottle towards him. A peace offering. “Please.”
The man eyes the bottle—it’s easily worth five times what he’s serving me. After a moment he sighs and grabs a clean glass, pouring me another whiskey.
“Thank you.”
He just snorts and retreats to the other side of the bar to keep watch on me, leaving the brown bottle in front of me.
“Hey, mi’suh nice fella,” says a familiar voice. I turn and see it’s the young whore from the other day. His blond curls hang in wet ringlets around his face and he’s got a smile stretching from ear to ear—he’s looking at me like I’m a long-lost pal, but there’s something off in his expression. Could be the ugly bruise on his cheek colouring my perspective.
The kid slides his hand up my knee and grabs my dick through my pants, easy as can be, and narrows his eyes at me. “Come lookin’ for me, long-tooth?” he says, tilting his head, his grin getting coy. I notice for the first time that he’s got one green eye and one blue.
“No,” I growl at him, and push his hand out of my lap.
“Why fo’, then?” he asks, frowning. His hand finds my thigh again. I sigh and down my whiskey. “You wanna I find you n’other? Maybe girl, yeah? Lou-Lou nice,” he says, thumbing towards the woman on the stairs. “I give better suck.” He squeezes my leg and I look away. There’s something desperate and hungry hiding behind his teasing expression and it just makes me feel tired.
“Get lost, kid.”
The old N2 unit in the corner suddenly starts hitting the same piano key over and over again. Plink plink plink. The kid’s hand slides up my thigh, insistent, his eyes locked on mine. “C’mon, mi’suh.”
“Scram your ass, Apple,” the bartender growls. “Go kick Patch and clean up them fuckin’ spittoons ‘fore I slit yer belly.”
The kid jerks his hand back from my leg, retreating a step. He tries to hide his fear under a toothy grin, but I can see it in his eyes. After he gives the broken-down old android a hard shove—Patch, I’m assuming—it sits up a little straighter and starts playing a new tune. Melancholy compared to what it was playing before.
I watch the kid scurry around, pouring out the dented metal buckets that serve as spittoons in this dump, and drink my whiskey. I notice he’s limping.
I sigh.
“How much?” I say, pointing to the kid. “To buy outright.”
The amount the bartender quotes is more than I can afford. The kid turns to look at me with those mismatched eyes and it tugs at whatever softness is left inside this burned-out old husk of mine. I sigh again. “You wouldn’t put that against the bottle I just gave you, would you?”
The stony look the old man gives me says it all and I drop my eyes, concentrating on my whiskey. The kid would have just gotten in the way.
The way of what? I came to this moon to find oblivion, but it keeps eluding me. Maybe I’m not as done with this life as I thought I was. I finish my drink and stand, nodding to the bartender. The kid’s sweeping the floor, his back to me.
Sorry, kiddo. I tried, I think as I walk out the door. But did I really?
Doesn’t matter… it’s too late now.
I pause in the middle of the street, my head hung low and my hand in my pocket. The brand-new utility knife rolls over and over in my fingers. The expensive new knife.
Fuck.
+++
The dust storm is like a wild animal clawing the desolate landscape. It’ll hit in twenty minutes, maybe less. I drop my binoculars into my bag and look over my shoulder to where the kid is setting up our tent for the night. We should be all right to weather the storm—our shelter’s on the lee side of a big group diorite spires sticking out of the hardened dust—but I have him drive a spike into the stone, just to be sure. By the time he’s done, the air is so thick with yellow dust that I can’t see my hand in front of my face. We duck inside the small tent and he zips it closed.
“Lantern,” I say and point. The kid nods and sits down with it.
I’m rummaging through my pack for some grub when it hits me that what I bought won’t last long with two stomachs to feed. At least the kid doesn’t look like he eats all that much. I watch him turn the crank on the lantern, his skinny arm going round and round and the tip of his tongue poking out the corner of his mouth. I clear my throat.
“He called you Apple back there. That your name?”
“Ya, mi’suh,” he replies, grinning.
“What the hell kind of a name is ‘Apple’?” I say, leaning back. He shrugs and keeps turning the crank. “Have you ever even seen an apple?”
Apple lifts his eyes just as the lantern finally turns on. His pale eyelashes catch the light—he looks otherworldly for a moment but it passes when he sucks in his bottom lip, his brows nearly touching above his upturned nose. “No, mi’suh.” He sets the lantern down between us and tilts his head up at me. “You seen one?”
I nod. “When I was a boy there was an orchard next to my father’s farm.” Right away I can see his confusion—maybe he doesn’t know what an orchard is. I start to ask him, but he startles me by crawling forward to straddle my thighs.
“Don’t do that.”
“Why fo’?” he replies, unbuckling my belt. He smiles at me as he unzips my fly. “You no wanna?”
I shake my head.
His grin dimples on cheek. “You sure, mi’suh Big Dick?” He starts digging into my pants for my cock and I take his wrist, pulling his hand out.
“I’m certain.”
Apple’s face falls. “No like me?” he says in a small voice.
“I like you fine.”
“Lemme then, ‘k?” He twists his wrist out of my grasp, holding his hand just above my crotch, waiting for me to agree.
I’m sorely tempted. His was the last hole I’d fucked and I remember it being nice and snug.
“Suck then?” he asks, his expression hopeful.
“No.”
“To thank you,” he says soberly with a small head nod. I know his hand’s still over my half-covered, half-hard dick. I can feel it, just hovering there.
“Thank me by keeping that lantern lit, carrying shit when I tell you to, and keeping your complaints to yourself. That’s it. No fucking required.” Noble words for a guy who hasn’t even tried to move the kid off his lap yet.
Apple stares hard into my eyes, silent and unmoving. “No fucking?”
“No fucking. No sucking. No jerking.”
“Liar.” He lifts his chin, challenging. “Yuh gon’ beat me?”
“I’m not going to fucking beat you,” I say, starting to get annoyed. At least I think I am.
He finally relaxes, nodding. “No beat. No fucking. Yuh keep promise, long-tooth?”
“Yup. Promise.”
“Okay,” he says happily and shrugs, but then goes right back to pawing at my cock, freeing it from the confines of my dusty pants.
“But I said—”
“Shut up, old man,” Apple replies with a crooked grin, suddenly losing the pidgin and most of his hayseed accent. “Trust me—just sit back 'n let me work.”
Surprise robs me of speech and I just watch as he shifts backwards on his knees to pop the crown of my dick into his mouth. Well shit… If I can’t talk him out of it, so be it. And Pytre was obviously right when he said the cunning little actor was older than he looked—this “kid” is no kid.
I groan and let my head fall back. His tongue starts swiping back and forth like a metronome while he slowly forces my cock down his throat. Holy hell, he wasn’t joking earlier when said something about giving good “suck”. The airtight blowjob he’s giving me could only be improved by him unhinging his jaw to swallow down my balls along with my shaft.
Shit... Pytre. Why did I have to think of him just now? I close my eyes to swap Apple out with Pytre. It's a funny thing—I taunted the enigmatic Rimer with every obscene proposition I could think of during my stay, but right at this moment I feel kind of guilty, I guess, for imagining him gagging on my cock like a goddamn pro.
Not guilty enough to keep myself from enjoying this, of course.
It’s not long before I exhale hard then groan, blowing my load down Pytre’s throat… but it’s Apple who sits up, licking his reddened lips as I sit there, panting.
The kid tilts his head, narrowing his eyes at me. “Who was it?” he asked.
“What do you mean?” I try to tug my pants closed but with the way he’s straddling me, the material’s pinned under him.
“You were with someone else,” Apple says. “I can always tell.” I look up at him and he smiles a little wistfully. “So, who was it?” he asks.
“None of your fucking business.”
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