Meat City (I) (A Summer Breeze Short) (782 hits)
Category: NoneLabels: Summer_Breeze
Rating: 1.37 on 22 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Jack McCallum (View user info) at 2006-12-21 16:55:15 EST
Summer Breeze http://www.ubersite.com/m/94211
Winds of Change http://www.ubersite.com/m/94407
I woke up at dawn, with a raging headache. I had dried blood on my face and dried spunk on my belly. Peli was gone.
The last thing I remembered was my raging hardness, and Peli straddling it by the shifting light of a fire. She started off joking about my greego preek, but soon she was expressing herself with soft whimpers in counterpoint to my harsh breath.
Peli looked like she was made of gold as the fire glowed on skin so much darker than mine. Whenever she lowered her head her long dark hair tickled my nose.
We had been on the road together for over two years now. Peli still had her secrets and I had mine, but at night we could still comfort each other. We had come together fourteen times before. I don't know why I kept count, but I did. Peli had not caught pregnant. Maybe my seed was bad. Maybe the stillborn thing that had come out of her a year ago had ruined her somehow.
I suspected she still thought of the squalling monstrosity that had been her child. She dreamed of it, that I knew for certain. Sometimes in her sleep she would murmur softly and hold her arms a certain way, cradling an unseen child.
More than once I wondered if our coupling was intended to get her pregnant, to erase the memories of that flawed child with the reality of a healthy one.
I don't know if we loved each other. I had no one else to talk to about how I felt in regard to Peli. Until I woke up with the dawn, my forehead and belly crusty, my heart hammering as my last memory came back to me.
Peli had been moving on top of me as if I were a wave in the ocean, and just when I peaked I saw hands grab her slim arms, her long hair, her slender throat. She was pulled off of me as I spurted.
I heard harsh laughter, guttural and stupid.
I sat up and something hit me from behind. I leaned forward like I was stinking on ganja after doing hot knives over the fire and felt blood running down my face. Everything spun around me. Then I fell back, and when I opened my eyes it was dawn.
Squinting in the harsh light of day I stood and staggered to the creek near our camp. I couldn't do anything until I was lucid, and only the crisp water could wake me up. I dropped into the stream and then stood quickly, sucking air and scrubbing the caked mask of blood from my face. I had a knot on the back of my head that hurt like bajubbers. My pubes were crusty from the dried juices Peli and I had made. I dropped into the cold water again and then climbed out of the stream shivering.
As I pulled on clothes I remembered something else from the night before. I had seen two faces, slack dumb faces. Peli had been taken by flatheads. I also remembered a metallic wink in the night and shook my head, because memory was telling me one of the flatheads had been wearing a metal hat.
I was glad Peli was taken by flatheads. They were probably doing the bidding of another. If she had been taken by a roving, cannibalistic horse gang she would be dead already.
I packed what goods I could carry, what was essential, and hit the trail. It wasn't hard to find. Three sets of prints in the soft earth alongside the creek, and drag marks from a pair of bare heels. Where the drag marks ended I found a single drop of blood.
Peli may have been small and thin but that didn't prevent her from kicking like a mule when she was upset. I hoped she had kicked one of the flatheads right in his atrophied balls. I also hoped she was unharmed.
It was spring in the American Midwest and the air was still cool. Thinking of how Peli could kick made me wish I still had my mule. It had been a scabby old thing, but it carried us and our gear when we were too tired to walk.
We ate the mule in the dead of winter. I had argued that it was of better use alive, and I remember it looking at me with big brown eyes. Peli said we needed meat. She said she'd make a stew and dry enough meat to last for weeks, something she had seen her mother do many years ago.
Peli went to work on me and tricked me into sex, and after we were done and I went into a deep sleep as I always did, she went to work on the mule.
By the time I woke up she had skinned it down pretty good, and before I could complain she slipped a chunk of roasted meat into my mouth. She had hand-rolled the meat with spices. I tried not to think of those big dumb brown eyes as I gorged myself.
"I cut queek," Peli had said. "I know you feel bad about the burro, so I breeng death queek and now he does not have to die from a broken leg or free-sing to death because we work heem too hard."
I already missed her, and I was trying not to panic.
I had a length of smooth wood I had been carrying as a weapon. I used it as a walking stick until my head cleared and I was steady on my feet.
I walked southwest from the river for a day and came to old steel tracks cutting across grassland. In the distance I could see the remains of an old road heading in the same direction. I still thought that the whole idea of trains was ridiculous, but as old as these tracks appeared to be they were not overgrown or covered in rust like most I had seen. Maybe there were boxes as big as houses that ran on them.
Down the tracks there was a platform on the rails, and an old man sitting on it. The old man had a popgun.
"Good day," I called out. I waved and tried to look friendly.
The old man waved, and I walked closer.
When I was close enough that he could see I was not as old as he was, he pointed the popgun in my direction. My hair is blond, almost white. He must have thought I was an oldster like him. I was younger and stronger and a stranger, and that made me a threat.
The old man was wearing filthy clothes, and when the breeze brought his scent to me I choked. There are a lot of old whitehairs who never bathe because they think the summer breeze bug was in the water, since many thought the disease came from the sea.
The old man shouted. "Fuckya-fuckya!" His voice sounded tiny and faraway.
I stopped and thought about this. There was still a good distance between us. Popguns were home-made rifles that were notorious for being inaccurate, and they took a while to reload as they had to be taken apart. The man was very old.
"F-f-fuckya, boy! Goway an' fuckya!"
I held up my walking stick. "I'm going to push this stick up your ass and out your mouth and roast you over a fire!"
Tiny white eyebrows rose on a tiny ruddy face.
"I'm hoping you don't have any teeth left," I called, trying to sound menacing. "I hope I can fuck your old mouth before you die!"
The whitehair raised his popgun to his shoulder and fired.
I heard the round strike the earth somewhere far to my left, and started to run. The old man began unscrewing the two steel tubes that made the pop gun pop. His hands were shaking.
He saw me getting close and shouted, "Fuck mud!"
"Easy," I said, slowing to a walk. "Easy old man. I just want to ask a question."
"Dead and naked Jesus!" he cried, taking a shiny brass round from one pocket of a jacket covered in long brown stains. "Balls in a snare!
I stepped onto the platform just as he tried screwing the popgun back together. I dropped the steel tubes on the platform.
"Where am I?"
He sneered, trying to hide his fear. "Outta Boonville. Fuckya!"
"What's that river back there?"
"The Big Bumfuck."
I slapped his face and he began to blubber. "The Mizzurah!"
"Where do these tracks lead?"
"Lotsa small towns," He said. He shut his eyes and threw names at me. "Blackwater, Marshall, Clinton's Pecker, Higginsville, Blue Springs, others along old I70, all the way into Kay-cee."
"Meat City?"
He drew a breath and looked me in the eye. "Only for sick young puke-eating dogs like you!"
I was so shocked at this sudden bravado he took advantage of it, gave me a shove, and leaped off the platform. I fell back against an angled steel bar. I suppose the old man was planning on hitting the ground and running like the wind. Instead he hit and collapsed. I heard bones pop as loud as his gun had.
"My hip!" The rolled on the ground, his face turning purple. "Oh you cuntsucker my goddam hip!"
The steel bar I was leaning on dropped down slowly, and I could hear old gears working. The platform moved. I looked at the bar. It was connected to the platform by a central mount, and there was another bar across from it, like a child's see-saw. I grabbed the bar and raised it. The platform moved again. Bar, gear, wheels, I thought. Clever.
The old man was still rolling and cursing. "Oh you bag of pus, why not just cut me open and pump my gizzard full of sput!"
It seemed to reason that the greater the injury the less noise he would make. I looked back and saw that the old man was just a shape in the grass. I tossed my walking stick to him. "Use that to get home," I said.
A skinny arm rose up out of the grass as the old man shook a fist at me. "Come back here and I'll fuck you in the ears!"
I turned and faced down the dwindling line of steel tracks and began working the steel bar. Soon enough the old man was far behind me and I was on my way to Meat City.
It took another day. The track I followed swept north and south like a river instead of cutting straight across the land like one of the old roads.
I reached a graveyard of rusting trains and stared at them in wonder. They were real, and I wished they still crossed the country.
There was a big market on Meat City's eastern side called Big East-Side Market. They weren't too bright around here.
The market was crowded, loud, and smelled foul.
I stopped by a shlong-roaster's cart. Short lengths of meat were roasting on a grill. A hand-painted sign told me that the bull shlongs were good, but the flathead meat was even better.
"Pecker on a stick," the shlongy called to passers-by. "Wrap your lips around my peckers and taste a little heaven!"
There was so much livestock being moved that clouds of dust were moving through the marketplace. It was a gloomy day that threatened to rain, and the crowd around me seemed to be one big brown and gray mass.
The shlongy held out a stick with a length of roasted meat on one end. "You lookin' for some penis?" He waved the stick and the impaled prick wobbled.
"Not today, old man. Any human trade in this market?"
He pointed at the crowd and said, "Get to fuck, sickman."
"I'm not one of the Afflicted," I said.
"You mean Affected, huh?"
Same thing. Regional difference. On the west coast you can buy barrels of soda. On the east coast it's pop. Same little wooden barrels holding the same basic mixtures of bubbly water and flavored syrup.
"I don't carry any money. "I'm a barter man."
The shlongy suddenly looked uninterested.
"Flatheads took my woman. A little Mex."
"Hoo-rah," the man said. He was balding. His sharp nose and blue eyes made him look like a small bird of prey. "Now fuckya."
I slipped my pack off my back and took out the old whitehair's steel tube weapon.
"I have a popgun, and one round," I said. "Barter for information?"
The shlongy rolled his eyes, but I could tell he was interested. "No meat in the deal?" He was still holding the roasted shlong on a stick and he wiggled it again. "I'm not giving this stuff away, you know."
"No meat," I said. "I'm looking for a Mex. Small and skinny. Young." I thought of how else I could describe Peli. "She's a fighter and sometimes she has a foul mouth."
The shlongy's eyes brightened. "Yuhuh, there was a cart gone through here a while ago. Had two slants, a darkie, and a spicy little bit of salsa in the back. She kept shouting about cutting off 'preeks' and things like that."
"That's my girl," I said. I handed the shlongy the popgun. "Human traders?"
He pointed, and I went in the direction.
Behind me I heard the shlongy say, "Good day, madam, fancy a mouthful?"
An elderly woman replied, "Oh, put that thing away!"
(to be continued...)
User Reviews
Submitted by homer42 (user info) at 2007-01-23 13:04:07 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
You have a twisted imagination.
"The shlongy rolled his eyes, but I could tell he was interested. "No meat in the deal?" He was still holding the roasted shlong on a stick and he wiggled it again. "I'm not giving this stuff away, you know." "
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2007-01-22 17:40:18 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
thats why I never saw this - I left for winter vacation that day
Submitted by charminglybeef (user info) at 2006-12-22 13:19:37 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
Truth be told, the word didn't bother me in the least.
I was just giving you a hard time about your reaction my use of 'puddinger'. Which really, I think was the same thing. Characters don't always speak in proper or perfect or even sensible English. And that's okay -- because neither do people. So long as it fits, it's all right.
Something similar can be said for personality. People are inconsistent, sure, but I don't think that added anything to this story. For me, it just diluted the intensity. The narrator almost seemed odd for entertainment's sake, but he wasn't strange enough to really captivate me.
In the end it comes down to me just not really liking him, or empathizing with him. It's personal preference, but I think this would have been stronger with a stronger character.
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2006-12-22 11:18:57 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by charminglybeef (user info) at 2006-12-21 23:35:36 (#)
Ranking: 1
Author number one shat the bed with this line: "I had a knot on the back of my head that hurt like bajubbers".
Bajubbers?
---
The descriptions of sex seemed awkward and self-conscious. I think it was the odd voice of the narrator. He was almost funny. He was almost bad-ass. He was almost kind. But he was almost everything. Including inconsistent.
The story itself was good, but the narrator did very little for me.
And something about the word 'spunk' really turned me off. Even moreso than 'bajubbers'.
--
I can see that, beef, and that's the risk you take with playing with language and not telling something straight and dry. Here's my take. The 'bajubbers' was a thing I always do when writing about future or alternate places - throwing in slang from THERE that we are not familiar with HERE. Sput was another... unless that is a real word. Writers have been doing that since forever. As for the narrator's voice, use Uber as an example. Sometimes the same people can be gentle or heartless or hilarious. The voice isn't set in stone because the narrator is just a normal guy. Badasses are boring anyway. As for the sex scenes, I'm sure they'll improve as I keep writing, but I wanted it to be just a little in your face without being pointlessly explicit. Also, these scenes are a real test of my imagination since I've never actually had sex with anyone before.
Submitted by swimmingbirdblue (user info) at 2006-12-22 09:57:51 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I am just getting into this series and I'm digging it. Keep it up! Take luck!
Submitted by Falafel (user info) at 2006-12-22 01:06:02 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Oh, Hubert Cumberdale... you taste like soot and poo!
Submitted by charminglybeef (user info) at 2006-12-21 23:35:36 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
Author number one shat the bed with this line: "I had a knot on the back of my head that hurt like bajubbers".
Bajubbers?
---
The descriptions of sex seemed awkward and self-conscious. I think it was the odd voice of the narrator. He was almost funny. He was almost bad-ass. He was almost kind. But he was almost everything. Including inconsistent.
The story itself was good, but the narrator did very little for me.
And something about the word 'spunk' really turned me off. Even moreso than 'bajubbers'.
Submitted by Crystle (user info) at 2006-12-21 20:45:46 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
not long enough... glad you're continuing this.
Poor Peli... don't kill her!
Submitted by St_Jimmy (user info) at 2006-12-21 20:15:00 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2006-12-21 17:44:55 (#)
Ranking: 2
Good stuff and even a Shlongy...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Submitted by drgoatcabin (user info) at 2006-12-21 17:40:07 (#)
Ranking: 2
It's about time Jack...Damn I like this series.
Submitted by Cyrus (user info) at 2006-12-21 18:21:20 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
"You lookin' for some penis?" Nice.
You've created a mirror-world to Uber, everyone says "fuckya!"
Submitted by apollo88 (user info) at 2006-12-21 17:49:38 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
read the rest of the comments on that post jack'laus
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2006-12-21 17:44:55 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Good stuff and even a Shlongy...
Submitted by drgoatcabin (user info) at 2006-12-21 17:40:07 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
It's about time Jack...Damn I like this series.
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2006-12-21 17:34:23 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Uberboard-
uberboard TheUniter SECRET IDENTITY EXPOSED as Apollo! http://www.ubersite.com/m/97010#2259126
?????
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2006-12-21 17:29:47 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Everything you ever wanted to know about TheUniter
# Messages posted: 0
# Reviews written: 966
Submitted by TheUniter (user info) at 2006-12-21 17:28:40 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Lib (user info) at 2006-12-21 17:26:59 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Thank you
Submitted by pen_name (user info) at 2006-12-21 17:24:40 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by GodChicken (user info) at 2006-12-21 17:11:07 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Petty -2's suck.
Submitted by darko (user info) at 2006-12-21 16:59:25 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
+2 meat
Submitted by PokeyMen (user info) at 2006-12-21 16:55:50 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
not short enough
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2006-12-21 16:55:42 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
I'm bored. Bored, damn it!