emptymouthpiece

Spare Parts

Part Nine

The level below that also left suggestions as to what happened there so long ago. Another small area was burned and broken up. The panels and chairs spoke to a working environment and Garrett could only guess that it was the communications hub of the bunker from what he remembered of his time spelunking in the ruins of the Tumor Queen’s...
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Part Eight

The first suite of rooms to the left were all ruined. Not merely burnt or smashed up but both. There were no skeletons or old weapons left to gather dust. The place had been deliberately smashed up and set fire to by parties unknown and that was that. Beyond and on the other side of a long hallway were the first...
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Part Seven

Reaching the dark opening to the bunker seemed like an insurmountable obstacle. Dealing with the overseers took less time than Garrett figured on but the pail men had a hand in that. Carrying the girl made things easier. She was so thin it was hardly different than hauling a water barrel up the hill and he’d been doing that for months....
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Part Six

The ax with its sawed-off handle and the sharp knife were tucked in the pail men’s daily pail, the palsied girl carried it down only a few steps behind Garrett and as they set to emptying, he stooped down long enough to grip both, coated in all manner of waste.

The first overseer barely registered how quick and purposeful Garrett began...
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Part Five

“Take me with you.”

She was trying her best to whisper but the palsy made her speech hitched and hard to use. He rose and tried to whisper as well but she pushed down on his chest with one shaking hand. “I’ll die here. My whole life, you’re the only person who’s ever been kind to me, and even your kindness...
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Part Four

He took his pails down in the morning and took little moments of time to survey the surrounding land, especially the yawning opening of the old bunker and the surrounding vegetation. The Believers, for modesties sake never relieved Garrett of his clothes. One night he looked at the grey, stained remains of his white robe and looked at the careful stitches...
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Part Three

Half mad self-mutilators, torturers, indoctrinated cattle willing to do anything their shriveled Elders told them to do. Garrett shed no tears for these people as he observed them toiling through their largely joyless lives. When some of them eventually got around to asking him his name after his time in the noose and his time of being guarded as he went...
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Part Two

The quiet contempt and sense of otherness he had felt his entire life served him now as it had served him growing up among his own people. People don’t respect or admire you for being first in line to do the things no one else wants to do, but people will silently nod and be thankful its not up to them...
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Spare Parts

Part One

His deer and seal skin pack are nothing but a crumpled pile of shredded remains. His beloved walking stick, the one crafted so carefully by the chief of a tribe that no longer walks the earth is nothing but spent firewood now. His weapons belt, designed, carved, and initialized by the most talented leather worker of his own forgotten people is...
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