Gallows Humour | Watty's 2023

Two Friends at the End of the World

Smoke in their mouth. They were still alive. They were still alive?

They coughed, an earthquake shattered them inside out. Too agonizing to scream. Screaming would hurt. Instead, they laid very still, and gulped oily air like a fish plucked from water.

Brain felt popped. Nothing in their ears, not even that infernal ringing. They were deaf now, they were pretty sure. Not that it mattered, their only friend was mute. Not that that mattered, they were dead. When, not if. Brain damaged, broken boned, bleeding out. Their best chance at medical supplies burning in the decimated building shell behind them. The only way off the island utterly destroyed, its carnage littered the island and ocean, little fires consuming the debris. Not a single survivor in sight.

That half-assed plan of theirs had worked. All those Factioneers, blown to pieces with the bridge. They'd always known that rickety thing would kill someone. A weak laugh slithered past their lips. Now they were trapped, doomed by its absence.

The stilted laughter got stronger. Inside joke. Inside hysterics. They always had been prone to gallows humour.

A pebble struck their cheek. It kind of surprised them that they still had a cheek. Every bit of exposed skin felt singed.

Thok.

Another pebble bounced off their forehead. What the fuck. They rolled to one side, body spasming in protest. Forced their eye to focus. Vision wasn't doing so hot. Moving turned the island into smears of light and shadow. They wiped char and gunk from their face. Their hand came away wet. A glance down showed not red blood, but pink-tinged fluid. Really all they could make out was the colour.

Reaching back, they touched an aching spot on their head. Their scalp felt spongy. Then again, they were soaked head to toe. They picked out a shard of gravel that had tried to embed itself. It was an off-white, smeared with red. They turned it, squinting at the porous edges and smooth sides.

Was that a piece of their fucking skull?

Some part of them that wasn't completely out of it gagged. They dropped the shard just in time for a spray of pebbles to pepper their face.

"Fuck off—"

Their anger dropped away as they lifted their gaze from the gravel. Into the gaps flooded terror, pure and gut-wrenching. It hit hard, blacked out their vision as they lurched to their hands and knees.

A demon made of red sulfur and sharp volcanic glass arced her knife toward their last remaining eye.

A fury of black crashed into her at the last instant.

Black and pink and white and red and torn rags and old scars and piebald hair and the knife and Radio and Otsana.

Not escaped.

Not dead.

Locked in vicious combat, the gravel under their boots skittering in every direction. Radio blocked Otsana's knife arm and twisted it behind her back. Quick, sure, except for a drag in its step. The knife stuck hilt-up in the dirt.

Otsana's mangled face, warped and half-sunken, heaved with bitter anger. She met True's stare. Held it as she bucked hard, slamming her head square into Radio's face. It staggered. She slipped free, shoulder sloped in a way that could only mean dislocation, knife hilt-up in the dirt. She dropped, spinning, boot crashed into Radio's knee and sent it sprawling.

In a wild thrash of hurricane limbs, she had the knife and whirled. Radio threw up its arms in the nick of time. The blade plunged clean through.

True lurched to their feet. Ignored the wildfire pain consuming every fiber inside them. Bones grinding and popping. World turning out-of-control circles. One more step, they lied to a knee that felt ballooned and mushy at the same time, like the time-bomb milk cartons.. One last task. Please, they begged, one more minute, please. They had nothing left to trade, a broken husk of desperation.

Ahead of them, Radio heaved Otsana off. Abused metal snapped, blade abandoned in its arm. It rolled to its feet, Otsana mere seconds behind it. She stumbled, empty-handed. Her back to True. Within reach.

Radio caught sight of them, something unreadable flickering across its face. Otsana seized the instant's distraction. She lunged, True lunged with her. Their hands wrapped around her as she beat against Radio's raised arms. The deflected blow bounced her back into True's grasp.

No time to think. They crushed her close to them and plunged their hand into her smashed eye socket. Molten blood erupted around their fingers. Soft tissue squelching under nails. Otsana thrashed wildly. Drove her elbow into their broken ribs. Bucked her head back again and again, desperate to escape the thing clawing its way inside.

True gave a final shove, felt a pop, and that was it. Mid-breath, mid-thrash, mid-fight she ceased. She crumpled, mangled skull sliding off True's hand, and landed face-up. Her remaining volcanic eye now dull. Dead. For good this time.

Vertigo washed over True, threatening to take them down, too. Fighting for breath, they lifted their gaze to Radio. Their goodbye died on their lips.

"No." The plea caught on the torn edges of their throat. No, that wasn't fair. Tears choked their eye as Radio unstuck its skewered arm, and freed the blade from its neck. Dark arterial blood the colour of misery flooded from the wound, draining away in seconds a life that should have taken years to empty. It reached for them, black eyes glimmering in the firelight.

They dragged one foot forward toward it, but that was all. That was the last of their strength. Milk carton knee buckled, they crumpled slow motion. Trying to stretch out and out and out— resisting the impossible weight of gravity.

It managed to stagger across the lake of gore to their side but the effort pumped more blood out of it, four uneasy steps exhausted it. They slumped onto it, it slumped onto them. Layered on top of each other, little buckled pieces of driftwood knotted together by the breaking waves.

They folded it into them, desperate to hold it, and to feel its pulse on their cold skin, and to know it was alive even while they both died. Scavenger and shadow dweller sank to the bloodstained ground.

Radio rested its head on True's shoulder. True leaned into it, and, just for a minute, let their heart break.

The rain had let up sometime between explosion and tragedy, as if evaporated by the sheer heat of their destruction. A light sprinkle remained as if to soothe the damage done. Patches of night sky peeked between the thinning clouds, filled to the brim with glittering stars. True watched the reflection in Radio's eyes for a moment before tilting their chin up to watch the twinkling lights.

"Did I ever tell you I love the stars?" they whispered.

Radio squeezed their hand. Once, twice.

All around the fires blazed. The battle over, the victors none. But there were other people out there. Other civilians, other scavengers, even other shadow dwellers who would not live in the shadow of the Red Faction. The fires would scorch the blood from the island, turn bone to ash. A pyre, like so many others True had made. Until there was nothing left of the horror that had happened there.

A flame caught on the tail corner of their old coat, hungry and impatient.

True breathed a final breath. Felt Radio's heart pause and forget to restart. The pain faded with the light in both scavenger and shadow dweller.

And True thought,

It wasn't such a bad way to die.