Food for LIFE

FOOD OF LIFE

Dressed in sawdust and cockroach, the two-eyed renter forgot her dream and woke.

She lay there, realising what peace there is in silent wonder.

‘Could it be?’ she asked herself as she slid towards the disposal unit and excreted last night’s earnings. ‘That love is only a daydream?’

She stood, swaying for a moment, gazing into the cracked full-length truth reflector and shook slightly. Shaking at the sight of her stickleback hair, shiny and slippery, that death’s head face with its awful protruding eyes and grey shadows. She trembled at her flattened nose that hated the stink of the world, still, the functioning deep mouth and narrow drooping shoulders. Her flat breasts, thin waist and padded groin were ready for tonight’s lavatorial encounters.

She drew a deep breath, knowing the truth resembled her.

Strapping on the over-mantle, clipping her leg studs and scorch resistant overall she moved toward the door. The nauseating stench was overcome by her need to eat.

It was a hot winter’s night; the steaming wind was tainted by the acrid smell of burning embryos again. An electric stink like rusted metal hit her as she stepped from the porch. The fumes of life, she thought, stank like death.

To her left a radiation mutant sold plastic discs as souvenirs of the crumbling city. No one was buying today, who wanted to remember this?
‘Buy a disc…’ he sang. ‘Only a slice of bread.’

The renter walked like a wide-boy, all false confidence and swaggering insecurity, down to the Army barracks. There the fattened and glowing soldiers stripped off their masks and barrier uniforms to rest in decontamination baths.

They took their pleasure at their leisure.

A wave of knowing smiles followed her brisk progress and from behind brown masks red eyes envied her supple movements. Many a mouth was dry with lust that night.

‘The world is my oyster.’ The renter remarked under her breath as a target emerged from the shadows. ‘It will feed me tonight.’

‘Food for lewd?’ she whispered towards the darting form.
‘Fuck off you diseased cunt.’ The shadow spat before dipping into an open sewer.

By the barrack gate the renter was passed be a group of freshly steamed soldiers. A glance was exchanged and an offer expressed in the slight rise of his eyebrow.
‘Now!’ the soldier growled impatiently. ‘Here. NOW!’
‘Food,’ she whined in return. ‘Food, Pleasure, FOOD!’

The soldier looked around making sure the steam hid them from prying eyes. A tin of beans was produced and a smaller tin of corned beef, both were dated 5-8-5, two years hence.

Her renter’s eyes widened and the lips began to salivate as a bony finger reached for the prize.
‘Such a worthy price.’ She smiled.

The deal was struck. The two tins were passed in a darkened alleyway that was so secluded the bodies hadn’t been labelled yet. They lay bloated for the eyes to feast upon. The renter slipped the tins into her lockable pocket and unsnapped her leg studs.

‘Spread-eagle!’ the soldier murmured as he unzipped his jumpsuit.

She lay back in the maggot-infested dust and tried to concentrate on the radiation-tinted stench of death and embryo fires. He mounted her and her body automatically moved in the pleasure motions. Her thoughts drifted back to last night’s dream where she was living in a house and her mother was cooking dinner for the family.

Swimming in the steaming smells of thick gravy and feeling her teeth sink into soft potatoes and green cabbage.

She could feel the nutrients in her blood just by remembering them.

‘Urgh!’ The soldier spat breathlessly as his heavy body collapsed down upon her forcing the air from her small lungs. He lifted himself up and she looked down at the whitewash splashed across her groin-pad.

Then she caught a slight wisp of rotten meat, the smell of unclean foulness that said he too had the sickness.

Maybe just the start of it but she could smell it in his blood and emissions. Of course, he hadn’t declared it, as he should had, just like the others she had known;  but then again, neither had she.

He stood and zipped up before spitting a thick green glob of lung material onto a scurrying maggot rat.
‘A lousy fuck!’ he said before turning and going into the mist.

The renter stood, checked her lockable pocket and was happy to find the lock secure. This made her laugh for the first time that day and as her screams rang out in the darkness someone knew she was happy; or insane.

She laughed not for herself or for the irony of their illness; she laughed because, really, she wanted to cry but wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. Weeping people starved to death and today she would live.

Smiling, a black demonic smile that only the mutants recognised, she shuffled off.  Gone was the swagger, gone was the pretence of confidence. She shuffled off toward her open fire and bed of sawdust, towards a saucepan of beans and corn beef and her only trusted friends, the roaches.

c:The Dogbreaths (DWKirby. all rights reserved)