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Making a Deposit; John Ganson Solo
Topic Started: Mar 9 2018, 01:56 PM (46 Views)
BlackMountainRadio
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Vault idiot
[ * ]
"Stop tugging on the string" Exclaimed a young girl for the fourth time as John pulled tighter on the chord to hurry her along. Her feet dragged across the cracked pavement each stepping lazily one after another at an awkward pace, sometimes stumbling over herself to keep up with her captor. She was still suffering from her wound on her left foot from a faulty bear trap and tried not to put her full weight on it, slowing them both down for what seemed like an eternity.

John gazed back at her with contempt and anger, they had been travelling for at least two weeks on the road; a journey that would otherwise take at least half the time if John was on his own, or even with less resistant stock. He captured her near one of those pissy smelling villages that looked as bad as they stank, she had been heading to gather fruits before being clamped and passing out from blood loss. That was nearly a month ago, or maybe two or even three for that matter, who knew? who cared? John had attempted to sell her at Conroe with no luck, then to a passing merchant and later a raider who nearly robbed him of her. They were now headed to a 4th, and hopefully final, buyer. John was usually a well-mannered and rational man but had started to project his frustration on the unsuspecting girl.

"Will you shut up! I can't think with you always yapping about this and that honey"

"My name is Julia"

"What?" scoffed John as he kept pulling on her neck string.

"I said my name is fucking Julia!" she screeched with the little strength she had "and what the hell are you thinking about anyway? the road goes only up and down and theres nothing either way. face it, you've got no idea what you're doing do you?"

"I said shut up! and if you must know i'm trying to figure out when we run out of provisions"

"And whens that?"

John looked depressingly at the black abyss of the bottom of his satchel bag which was morbidly light. He had packed at Conroe on the assumption that he would be able to sell her off at another point soon, reducing mouths to feed and giving funds to buy more food. But alas, another one of John's perectly timed plans had failed to come to fruition perfectly. "We had 2 weeks worth to start with and we are in the third day of the second"

"In other words we're 'statistically' fucked then aren't we, well well fucking done. Guess all that thinking couldn't handle basic math huh? look you cleary don't know the wastes, I was scavenging for food before you came along. I don't want to die out here as much as you do, if you'd just give me a little leeway here, maybe we could survive until we get to wherever we're go-"

"I SAID SHUT UP DAMN YOU!" roared John before turning around and striking her on the side of the face. She lost her footing and fell but didn't hit the ground, John was holding her up by the string around her neck which dug in and burned her skin like scorched rubber. She tried to scream in excruciating pain but lost her voice from berating John, instead her engorged veins from distress swarmed her checks and forehead akin to tribal tattoos. The hit had opened up an earlier wound from a previous beating and blood oozed out like punga fruit. It dripped onto her lips making them rouge and wet, sparkling in the morning sun. This of course, was not the first time this had happened. Julia had been travelling with John far longer than any other asset which was highly dangerous for him. Julia would sometimes go from utter hysteria to being dead silent and insular for days, today was a hysterical day which ended up with her collecting an additional wound or black eye.

John gazed curiously at her soaking red lips which was a small reminder that she was indeed a women, her name was Julia, she was from a Texan village he never bothered to learn the name of. Her lips made her seductive, despite all the scars, dirt and her smelling of piss (she seldom got toilet breaks) there was something mesmorizing about her, in that brief moment at least. It was moments like these that were most dangerous to John as it challenged his preconceptions that she was not human at all, but a product just waiting for the right buyer. It was becoming increasingly clear that Julia's extended presence was having an affect on him, distracting him from getting to where he needs to be: Bucket Town. He had to get rid of her and fast. She of course was right, she was always right, John had no idea what he was doing. He figured he would keep travelling along route 45 until he learned to do otherwise, a caravan trader told him the route splits after Conroe, he should take 19 straight up to the Bucket after that. John liked sticking to the roads for safety (mutants rarely came to the main roads; too much concrete maybe) and he enjoyed watching the burnt out cars and imagine who owned them, something he'd done since his late teens. Julia's suggestion of going off road was absurd to him, but the more he travelled with no results, the more she seemed persuasive. All the more reason she had to go, she was a bad influence too.

Sometimes at night, John would passively watch her sleep. He did this often to newly acquired assets but as time went on it became something else on occasion. He would briefly wonder what her life was like before him and what would become of her once he sold her. She was young with a good figure and lush red hair, so her future was quite predictable, some hired thugs that John used from time to time would jump the gun on that future with other catches but never John. He had been taught never to get high on your own supply, which he applied to slavery as much as he did with chems out of respect for his mentor; plus he could charge a premium on her. It was in these strains of thought that he would feel most embarrassed and vulnerable like a lover caught in flagrante. He would wake her up at night to carry on the journey as a way of punishing her for his internal discretions.

"See? Silence. The more energy you put into kicking and screaming like a little child, the more you need to eat, and the more you eat into my margin! conserve yourself and stay quiet and you'll get out of this fine, don't ever question me like that. Do you understand?" he said sternely.
Julia nodded her head with a glum expression her burgundy pony tail swaying slowly like the tail of a dog. She had the look of a small girl who had just been told off by her father. They both knew that this exact argument would crop up again in a week or so, they were both so stubborn that way. She had been mightily resilient up to now, but he would break her at some point, he always did.

The duo looked out onto the open road as if they hadn't already seen it hundreds of times before. Their heated row had briefly distracted them from their journey. The road had faded yellow marks like guidelines for weary travellers that went into the far distance. When the sun set in the west in the evenings it seemed the road would lead to fiery oblivion, which for all they knew it could. Cracks in the concrete spread like webs over an abandoned house that were so deep all one could see was black nothing where the ground should of been. The earth was arid and dry, the wind would carry dust and a wicked whooshing sounds would slap their ears as if calling from thirst. A yellow cloudy fog covered the wasteland on either side, with the occasional black skeleton of a tree alone in the expanse of nothingness. To their delight, the odd mole rat would appear out of the crevasses of the path and extend their food provisions for a couple of days longer.

"come on, let's keep moving. I think we're nearly there"

Julia smirked at John's optimism before being checked with a piercing glance. He could feel his authority wane at some points and he knew if would only be a matter of time before his control would simply be a pretence. He couldn't afford to keep walking the road endlessly, he was running out of time.

"You know what honey? I'm losing faith in the road, I think it's time to take a detour across the hinterland- It is to my knowledge that we are more likely to find wildlife and fruits to sustain us and it will shorten the distance of our trek considerably according to the map"

The map John was refering to of course was merely scrap parchment, he was concerned that Julia would infer a personnal victory from getting them off the road and used it as a cover, a shield to defend himself almost. But when he checked this, Julia was still staring ambiguously at the the barren desert that John oddly called a 'hinterland' She was not interested in his power-politics. So with a tug of the chord as a sign of encouragement, they moved off route 45 into the murky yellow unknown.
John Ganson-Self-conscious Slaver
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BlackMountainRadio
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Vault idiot
[ * ]
Starring at the open dune made John highly aware of his parched throat looking to Julia who did not share the same bleak expressions as he did. Her grimy face matched the sea of rugged brown and faded yellow. She was quite clearly in her element, her feet were more versed to the barren terrain than the road, so much so she was more confident in putting her full weight on her feet, which were still sore from capture and painfully excessive walking. So too, was she gaining speed, becoming more interested and engaged with her surroundings. She was in a day dream, memories of a better age flooded her mind in a sudden high, her life out in the grounds that isolate her village, the only world of any significance to her, of any meaning at all. She breathed the ash filled air with satisfaction, her arms stretched back like Christ the Redeemer, raising her face to the merciless day; absorbing every wind, every creak, crack and crevice of the land with a loving embrace. She forgot herself, her battered broken body grew lighter as she inhaled. John felt nervous just looking at her, he surrendered a small cough at the thought of the toxic breeze invading her lungs, until he noticed her smile.

This made John's blood boil, he re-adjusted his googles just to make sure it was no illusion; she was happy, or at least, as happy as this world warrants. What is she smiling at? How dare she mock me! such arrogance! she's laughing at me! ME! John exclaimed in his mind, letting slip an incomprehensible mumble under the safety of his bandanna. Once John came back to his rational self, he got a better understanding of the situation. For reasons only known to him, John wanted to 'share' in her nostalgia, he let loose his shield of cloth and gave her a callous smirk. Julia's escapism had left her no front line of defence against John's perceptiveness, she glanced over John as she surveyed the land and at that point her heart sank, he was still here watching her, trapping her, the hills and plains were so natural and familiar it felt like they were calling to her, but she had nearly forgotten that she was not here on her own terms. She watched the hills like an inmate watches the distance through cold steel bars, seeing what she loved and now hating it, because it was there, and she was here, with HIM. She felt so exposed she returned to her insular state as before with now an emptiness and a pinch of guilt, to allow her captor to take her joy away so easily in a fleeting moment. She was tired, helpless in humiliation; embracing childhood memories had never felt so childish. Julia quickly looked down at her throbbing blood-soaked feet, straining her neck in the process, in remorse once making eye contact with John. So pleased with his victory, he carried on smirking as he turned back to the dirt plain. He would defeat her on her own home turf, maybe going off road was not a bad idea after all?

John's condition however, was getting progressively worse as he steered further away from the known roads. Dust was seeping into him that he often lost his breath, he tried to mute his excessive coughing by burying himself in his bandanna but with little effect. He did not tighten it permanently, he was so excited of demeaning Julia that he forgot to do so. Instead he would press it against his face and wipe the grimy sweat away in a frantic manner, like trying to swat a fly that persists in annoyance. It was times like these that John would forsake himself for wearing so much black; at night it was perfect camouflage for his line of work, but the day made him pay for it dearly, especially today. His leather gloves scorched his soft hands as if walking around holding two light bulbs. His chest burned on contact with his garments, so much so that John's concern of catching alight, which would be absurd on another occasion, was not entirely unwarranted. The hat that offered any sense of shade for him was collecting heat so quickly and for such a long time that he began to feel a headache coming on. His vision blurred as he watched the boarder-less waste to the far distance, distorted, misconfigured, lightheaded; his body creaked from side to side as his legs tread lazily with each step. He nearly tripped and fell once or twice until regaining his balance only in the nick of time. His heavy body started to hunch over like a dragged corpse over the shoulder. He didn't want to take it off in fear of revealing his grey sides of his otherwise bald head. Then he realised that he was not alone, he had a spectator, his opponent had not yet conceded to him, he had to maintain his decorum, that cool and collected manner that had won him a small victory only moments ago. He raised his body upright, his spine nearly buckling from this small feat, staggering on with more vigour behind every lunge. He passed off his earlier weakness to make a mockery of Julia's, turning it into a joke, who was in a much worse state than himself:

'If you keep up like that we'll never get out of here' he let loose a broken laugh as he mustered the words with his strength and flare. 'come on now not much further, we're nearly there' he said cheerily, like telling a small child to finish her task, in hope of a small reward at the end, a Nuka-cola or a tale of Grognak perhaps? But the reward for Julia would be her continued existence, which was a pretty lousy reward at best. He gave another maniacal smile as before but Julia's eyes were still fixed onto her malformed feet keeping her upright. What was he on about? nearly where? she lacked the the energy to respond other than a mere shrug, which could of simply been the painful movement of her beaten mass. She moved on until she felt a crashing wave on the right cheek which knocked her on her side, John had smacked her again in anger.

'Look at me when I'm talking to you!' he screeched into the one ear facing the cloudless sky with the other buried in the dirt, standing over her, blocking the sun and engulfing her in his shadow, his voice burrowed into the recesses of her mind. After insuring his strike knocked her, he slowly put his hand under her head attentively and lifted her back up. She felt like gagging on contact with him but that would be too much effort, she nearly collapsed again after being propped up. He held her by both shoulders, gently and with care. 'come on now, we're nearly there, not much longer now honey' he waited a few moments to see her reaction. She tried to raise her head feeling every strain on the back of her neck, the front was inflamed and heavy as if she was going to cry but lacking the precious water to do so, instead it was just another weight on her already deteriorating self. She a gave a slow but convincing nod, looking dead on at John as she did so, this was apparently more satisfactory than a shrug, he released her to stand on her own. He then wiped the the dust on her side with the same abundance of care as he did lifting her up, he turned around and then carried on as before, like nothing happened at all.

'Let's get going shall we?' he said rhetorically.

The sun was beating down on them just as before too. The skeletal trees were not much different form the shadows they cast, the heat gave them no quarter. He couldn't make out a trail, squinting, re-adjusting his goggles to get a better view, only to realise that no such trail existed. He lacked the confidence to keep a steady pace further into the abyss. He made another quick glance to see if she picked up on it, the slow pace meant less tugging on the string and a brief respite for her burning neck, not that she really cared at this point anyway. John became emboldened to carry on, just to deny her a brief sense of comfort. Julia lumbered on in spite of herself and in spite to him. They passed the trees (using that term loosely) one after another, the only indication that they were going any distance at all other than a slight change in terrain every hour or so. But when the entire plain was covered by a dusty haze, it was extremely difficult to tell. For the first time in their journey together, John and Julia shared the same emotion of dread and despair. it was only when they saw a black silhouette on the horizon, once the dust had started to clear, that they became a little optimistic. It looked like a set of tress; but too narrow and straight, and too close to be of natural design. As they approached closer there were glimmers of rubble between the beams of black. The rusty metallics started to show stain as they came closer.
Edited by BlackMountainRadio, Mar 18 2018, 04:12 AM.
John Ganson-Self-conscious Slaver
S.P.E.C.I.A.L 4-5-5-8-8-4-6
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