Gallows Humour | Watty's 2023

The Way the World Burns

"Hrōkr told me all the way here to bash your brains in," the crazed woman hissed, so close her breath warmed the lobe of their ear. The unwelcome idea of Otsana dragging a Hrōkr backpack across the mountains, its feet dragging in the dirt until the skin peeled away while it whispered in her ear from a cauliflower head-stump, swam through True's dizzy mind.

They twisted just fast enough to catch a glancing blow with their pipe. Confusion flitted over Otsana's harsh expression. She butted what was left of True's nose, slamming a shock of static across their brain.

Groaning, they struggled to keep their feet under them. They slipped on the blood. Cal's blood. He lay face-down in it, scarred hand stretched out before him as if he'd been reached for help. Unmistakably dead. An inhuman shriek split the air. What had they said? He was going to get someone killed trusting Jonesy. Hysterics clawed at True's throat, fighting to join the war cry.

"What are you laughing about?" Otsana snarled, seizing the pipe and slamming them into the wall with it. All the air vacated their lungs with a crunch.

Scraping in a breath, they said, "you fucked up."

Even they weren't stupid enough to kill a cannibal's favourite person.

A streak of pale skin and dark hair slammed into Otsana. Someone's skull cracked on the concrete. Devoid of the brief support Otsana had been holding them up with, True sagged against the wall. Chest cavity filled with angry wasps, they could do little else but watch the two women fight.

Eliza came up on top. Fists clawed into Otsana's hair. Gone was any semblance of sanity. She was feral. She was furious. She slammed Otsana's head into the floor. Again, again. Screaming while she did.

A dark stain bloomed on the wet concrete. Otsana's knife lay abandoned, just within reach of her searching fingers. Lurching to their feet, True limped for the knife.

Not fast enough.

"Eliza!" the warning fell on deaf ears, punctuated by the sharp abrupt gasp of a woman with a knife plunged into her gut.

Blood fountained over Otsana. It blotted her out for an instant, coating her eyes and everything around them. Steam gathered where hot blood struck cold floor. With a guttural cry, Eliza wrench Otsana's arm, knife and all, from the gaping wound. In the blink of an eye she'd bitten off two fingers. She dove into Otsana's scream, sinking her jagged teeth into cheek muscle, she ripped it free.

Otsana heaved her off. Brandishing the knife in her mangled hand, she arced it at Eliza. The blade didn't get the opportunity to bite flesh. With a solid thunk, her head whipped back. An impression of the broken handrail denting the side of her blood-soaked skull. She deflated. Another crack of the pipe crunched her eye socket inwards. By the time she hit the ground she was limp, lifeless.

They kicked away the knife for good measure. Knelt in the spreading pool of blood to get a better look at Eliza's damage.

She was upright, swaying, hands pressed loosely to the stab wound. It dumped her life out in pulses. Her own heartbeat jettisoning blood through the injury.

"It's better this way," she said, glassy unfocused eyes fixed on Cal's body. Her breaths were coming too quick, rattling in her chest. "I never wanted that stupid disease to get me."

Her hands abandoned the pretense of holding anything in. It was too late. There was too much blood. Steam rose around her, a ghost wrapping itself around the remains of its body a final time. And the body sank, exhausted at last.

True closed her eyes.

It was time to go.

The storm, for all its shrieking and downpour, had not scrubbed the firestarter from the island. True hobbled from the fishery, and spotted the lump at the island-side base of the bridge. Radio had laid the final bomb. Radio itself was nowhere to be seen. If it were smart it would have escaped across the bridge to wait.