Sci-Fi Shorts

Only the Bonely

A/N - The italicised section is the prompt for this story, and the genre is bonepunk. Other prompts were to reference the Shania Twain's song That Don't Impress Me Much and the television show Survivor.  2800 words.

Night. Always a time to be alive. The stars twinkling. The crickets chirping. Every man, woman and child tucked away in bed, fast asleep.

The perfect time to work the boneyards.

She had a system. It was efficient. Perfect, really. Because no one expected a woman to go pilfering through piles of bones. A man, maybe—men were sick; it was expected of them. But women? No. And if they caught her, she could easily play all innocent. Bat her eyelashes and shoot them a smile. It always worked. She'd done it before. She'd do it again.

Her bag was full of femurs, skulls, shoulder blades. And all kinds of little ones, too: full toes and fingers, individual knuckles.

If someone were to take a peek inside they'd be horrified by what they saw. Because there was something else in there. Something nobody would want to see.

And she'd have to take care of them if they caught on. She'd done that before, too.

She was digging out a sweet-looking pelvis when a spotlight lit her up. She hissed through her teeth and turned to see someone headed her way—couldn't tell much, because the light had them backlit. They were just a shadow.

She realized what had happened here. She'd gotten too cocky. "Fuck you, Mad Mike Marsbergen," she muttered to herself and prepared for war.

In a single fluid motion, she ripped the pelvis out of its former grave, rolled into the shadows cast by a small hillock of broken ribs, and tossed it off to the left of the advancing figure. His head turned to investigate the resulting clatter and she took the opportunity to sprint in a silent, crouched run to his right, drawing her Femur 4000 Osseo-crossbone from its back-holster as she went.

The figure crouched over the pelvis and after a brief inspection, placed it into a bag of his own. So, she thought, diving behind a pile of knuckles, he's collecting as well as hunting. She notched a wickedly barbed bone-tipped bolt into the crossbow. Here's another bone for your collection, gristle-head. She took careful aim and fired.

The bolt flew straight and with a satisfying thunk, hit the intruder in the centre of the back. He grunted, in surprise or pain, and she waited expectantly for him to fall. Instead, he turned slowly, raised his arm and pointed directly at her, and with his direction, the spotlight found her again. Dazzled, she looked away, in a desperate attempt to retain her night vision.

The figure's footsteps crunched on bone fragments as he advanced towards her. The pace was deliberate and relentless and somehow mocking. Every step seemed to say, I'm not afraid of you, you are nothing to fear, you are nothing at all.

She fumbled with the crossbow, desperately trying to load another bolt. Finally her clumsy figures slotted one home, but as she raised the weapon there was an ear-splitting crack and it was torn from her grasp.

Stunned, she fell backwards. She watched in horror as the figure entered the beam cast by the spotlight. She could not believe her eyes. It couldn't be him. She'd assumed the figure was one of MadMike's henchman, some brainless muscle that she could charm or outwit or kill, or possibly all three. But this was no henchman. This was the man himself. Emineminem. Marsbergen. The Lord of the Boneyard.

Desperately she tried to pull herself together. She was a warrior and a scientist, not some pathetic Survivor reject. Well, unless it was from season 4,247. That had been a kick-ass season. She got to her feet and glared at the bastard. Clad from head to toe in a skin-tight black lycra skeleton suit, with interlocking bone armour, he was not an inviting sight. In one hand he held her crossbone and in the other a long whip - she now understood how she had been disarmed.