Stories From A Dead World, No. 4

FROM VARIOUS JOURNALS [AUTHOR: SOMETHING NAMED RUST]

Sand floats across the doorstep. It’s almost a liquid, almost. It’s abrasive, it’s thin and nearly red, it scratches the already-scratched floor where his boots cuff across it. Maybe he’s like me. He walks like it. I can’t tell, but he turns, and the question disappears. The mercenary who has just come through the door is nothing like me. He’s human. 

I’m something else. I’m not quite sure what. There’s metal in some of my bones. I don’t bleed like everyone else; my blood is pure, inky black. There’s a box on my back and it’s wired into my spine and into the back of my neck. The box is wired into my brain. 

I don’t know who put the box there. I’m not sure who put me here. I hate them, whoever they are. They stole my memories and my mind. And occasionally I kill, and they make me do it. I can’t tell how, but I know they do. I’m not myself, and I’m not human. I suppose that’s a start. 

Anyways. Sand, boots, mercenary, me. I’m Rust. I don’t know why people call me that, and I can’t tell if they used to before my mind was gone and this box was here. Sometimes I wonder if my strength cost my memories. Somehow I don’t feel it is. Somehow I know that they took my mind just to see my scrabble at the walls and plead with them to let me go somewhere real and too just, for the love of whatever god they still pray to, let me out of this miserable nightmare. Sometimes I wonder if they took my soul instead of my mind. A friend of mine, maybe my only friend, said that our soul was in our mind. That made sense to me; it explains why humans tend to die when you remove their heads. 

I’m tired, and I’m alone, but only one of those things bothers me. Humans talk continuously about love. It’s all they ever seem to talk about other than food. They’ll disagree of course, they say philosophy is what they’re discussing, or perhaps sports (it seems the same to them) but not love. I know better. I know when humans are talking about love, and all they do is complain about it. I don’t mind that I can’t begin to grasp the concept, even though I know I used to; it seems to do nothing but get in the way. 

Like now. The mercenary steps up to the bar, and instead of buying a drink he asks the bartender what a decent git for his lady might be. He’s young; he looks foolish, like I ought to be. Someone shoots open his head all over the bar. The mercenary, it seems, failed to pay out on a number of loans presented to him by the local gang, the Skullbiters (scumbags, every one). I ignore the gangers when they come into the bar to drag away the body, but that’s only because I’ve already been through his pockets. 

He wouldn’t mind. Everyone agrees; nothing can go to waste.