Gallows Humour | Watty's 2023

The Coffin Room

The last thing they wanted was to spend the night out in the open. The last thing, before staying the night in the city. They made it to the outskirts of the city, the market an orange glow at their back. Their arm throbbed and their palms stung where they hadn't been careful with the burning debris. More than that, they were tired. Deep tired. Muscle weighing too heavy on bone.

It was a stroke of luck they stumbled upon a farmhouse just off the abandoned highway, a little beyond the rusting powerplants that marked the edge of the city. It probably wasn't the safest place to lay, but it was better than nothing. True walked in. The door wasn't even locked. Country folk were like that, before they all died. Not a lot of break-and-enter type crime out in the sticks.

They twisted the bolt shut behind them and straggled through a cursory check of the house.

Empty. Empty. Empty. No shadow dweller, no factioneers, no bodies. The basement was either nonexistent or hidden behind a locked hall door they couldn't be bothered to dig up a key for. They scrounged a blanket out of a closet and retreated to the master bedroom to lick their wounds. The bed called to them. Fluffy, rumpled blankets looking practically luxurious. They dropped their salvaged blanket on the carpet and killed the desire to crawl onto the giant, comfy mattress with the reminder that someone had probably died on it and oozed into the springs.

Pack unclipped, thumping to the floor next to the tokens. They stuck the gun deep in their pack. Old coat, shrugged off. They rolled up their ragged sleeve to inspect the damage there. It looked better than it felt. A crescent of welts decorated it top and bottom, but it seemed their coat had borne the brunt of the bite. The blood had come from a small, jagged puncture on the soft belly of their wrist. From a shard of glass or a loose nail when they'd hit the ground. Which was a more horrible way to die, they wondered; rabies or tetanus. They fished out their meager first aid supplies.

Half an old baby food jar of salve and a dwindled supply of gauze wrap. They smeared a thin layer of salve over all the bloodied patches of their skin and the burns on their calloused palms. They wrapped their blisters, in hopes of protecting them from bursting. The last of their precious gauze supply went to the oozing wrist puncture. Coat back on. Blanket around shoulders. They rested their head on their pack and blinked up at the bed in the last few moments before sleep took over. A worm of unease wriggled at the back of their sleep-addled brain.

They startled awake to suffocating pressure over their mouth and realization seizing their brain.

There were no bodies.

Replaced immediately by the instinct to throw the weight pinning them down. The attacker clung to them. Hissing. A beat of struggling passed while their eyes adjusted and their brain overrode their fight or flight for just long enough to register Radio's caliginous form.

Hushing, not hissing.

True grabbed its wrist and wrenched it off.

"What the fuck are you doing?" they demanded. How had it even gotten in? It flopped its arm at them, fear in its strange bright eyes. The door slammed open, straight into True's face, deleting the next several seconds from existence. They blinked back to life with a mouth full of blood and a splitting headache.

They went for their shovel only for it to be kicked away by a pair of ugly yellow sneakers. The doorslammer grabbed a fistful of their hair and yanked them to their knees.

"Look at this little rat," the doorslammer leered, giving them a shake. Asshole.

True let the door-slamming factioneer know they were on the same page by punching him in the nose. Blood sprayed, True's knuckles smarted almost as much as their scalp. Doorslammer swore viciously, dropping True. It gave them a few precious seconds. They snatched their shovel from the corner, swung. And froze at the razor-sharp edge of a makeshift spear pressed to their throat. A second factioneer stood in the door, looking down the spear with dead eyes as if he could slide the blade into True's gullet and watch them choke to death on the end of to without blinking. Best not test that theory. They dropped their shovel.