Mama said I was always afraid of the dark. [oz][day 2]
Mar 8, 2022 20:45:02 GMT -5
Post by doodle :) on Mar 8, 2022 20:45:02 GMT -5
a comic
panel 1: Mrs. Tove sweeps the small, rubbery stoop of her old manufactured home, getting the dust off of it. The broom bites into her thick calloused hands. Exhaustion erodes thin cracks into her pretty face. She still wears her uniform from the car manufacturing plant, still stained with grease, still smelling like hot plastic and metal shavings.
OZ (off-panel): Mama! Mama!!
panel 2: Mrs. Tove glances up. Her little boy flees to her, his small skinny arms held out to take her, two rivers of tears rushing down his soft rounded cheeks. Blood dribbles down from a reddish skinless patch on his knee.
OZ: Mama, they hurt me!
MRS. TOVE: Who hurt you?
OZ: Mya and Kevina, they pushed me down on the hard hard concrete!
MRS. TOVE: Alright, baby, come here, Mama will make it feel better...a drawing
Blood smears his small, quaking hand. It drips off the talon-curved fingers. Onto the glittering dash of the mech. The red of the blood hurts the eye, the hand grotesquely huge with its exaggerated lines and details. Beyond, the sand and junk seems to slide away, like a rug being dragged out from beneath your feet, or perhaps the world is hurtling towards you and is about into you to collide like an oncoming truck -- impossible to tell, with the depth and proportions.a cartoon
The junk spires upward, aligned in rows, creating gaps that resemble dusty streets, seldom paved, sometimes with tires or rubber bricks. There's a sense of order and space; another that everything's leaned against each other, each relying on the trembling tension of the other so that the whole doesn't collapse in one seismic wave. First few rays of reddish dawn creeps over the horizon.
At an old gas station called "Rusty's," the pumps have been uprooted and dragged into the convenient store. They've been split open, gutted, and bedding has been laid down. The bedding has rotted; at one time mice lived in it, at once time fleas and worms and flies; now, one of them has a skeleton with rotting clothes and a rusty metal shelf for a helmet, and that's all. The shelves of the store line across the barred windows and the double glass doors, with the gas pump's tubing coiled tight around the handles.
Interior: Rusty's. Crashing and whirring reverberates into the dusty, soiled silence. A mech suit blunders through the doors. Shards of glass tinkle across the peeling linoleum floors, the old hoses snap and fly off and thump into the opposite wall, the warping metal bars groan and then suddenly screech as their bodies split apart from the pressure. It sags forward, looking rather like a body about to vomit, its domed cockpit protruding into the store. The cockpit whirs as it opens up, like a convertible. A child flops out bonelessly, a limp dish-rag thing, knees bent close together as he rises up, hands pressed to his chest, his shirt. The shirt is damp with blood and sweat. There is no blood in his face. His eyes roll around wildly in their sockets, and they are bigger than his stomach. Gasping, he staggers around, wobbling, shuddering, like a puppet with an uncertain puppeteer, dragging a bloodied palm through the dust that carpet the shelves. He wobbles to the counter, droops and sags around that. Thumps heavily into the thick door of the unisex bathroom, almost falls into it but manages to lean his weight onto the door. No toilet; a full roll of spotless toilet paper perched atop the rusty sink. He stares at his shattered reflection in the broken mirror and gags, covers his mouth to stop himself.
He goes to the corner where the pump/beds are. Notices the corner of a white box peeking out from under one pump. A hopeful gasp. He rushes, grasping at his chest, wincing as he pushes himself to move faster than he should. He drops to his knees, seizes that white box -- a red cross. Tears spring to his eyes. Fingers clumsy with desperation, he fumbles the latches open, tosses open the lid. Tucked in the corner, sealed tight in a small transparent box, are white thread coiled like a long thin snake, and a few sowing needles. The rest of the kit is empty.
His face goes slack as the realization stabs into him.[finds needle & thread, 2 water purification tables]
[heals]
