The Wasteland Called My Name

The raiding. The theft. The violence. All of it, no doubt. A long life spent being terrible and wicked. One can't escape the chains they lock on themselves.

She had escaped the acid rain while traveling the wastes on her motorbike. The place was little more than mutated wilderness amidst a bleak rocky desert. It was rare to have such weather there- rarer still to have anything rain down. But when the tiny beads of 'water' fell and stung like tiny wasps, she knew she had to find cover and wait it out.

Apparently, at some point, she was complicit in tossing away the key to those figurative locks and chains. Only she didn't know it. She had tried to change. The road warrioress had ended her banditry and took up the role of a wanderer, trying to find herself, trying to reinvent. But it's said the wasteland inevitably calls the name of those who despoil it and those who live within it, out of anger and bitterness. It didn't wait for the next life for karma to happen- it delivered the just and unjust there. She thought it was just the latter. Or maybe she still carried that brand upon her soul.

As she waited the storm out, she dozed within the dry safety of a shallow cave. There was no bear, no mutant lizard, nothing obvious. Nothing... obvious. When she awoke in a groggy stupor later, there was a period of adjustment, then confusion, and finally knowing she was not alone.

She saved people. Just a few, nothing more than travelers, really. She had turned against her fellow brigands. Maybe if she protected enough out there, the wasteland would forgive her soul. She wanted to live clean. But she remembered the last words of an old crone who whispered to her amidst the fire and looting of her colleagues, "No one will forgive you, fiend. Least of all myself. You will answer to the darkness that no man controls anymore." She had brushed the notion off several years ago. Whatever it took to give her solace to sleep.

She was bound, chaotically, in some great cobweb arranged at her back. Her arms were restrained, her legs parted in vulnerability, and a mouth sealed with silk to prevent a call for help. The web was large, damningly sticky, and stretching. A Night Hunter, she knew them as. Large cruel cowardly spiders who preyed on animals in the dark. Apparently, she was just that now. Fussing and snarling, she found her movements slow, modest, and half hearted. What was going on? Why would her body listen? She saw the crawling thing approach from the ceiling, down to the floor, and move towards her on eight wicked legs. It introduced itself without words as her new master.

The road warrior dreamed of the old woman many times, repeating those words against the backdrop of the forsaken wilderness that came about from the end of the world. No mercy for the wicked. Not even those who were trying to change. Maybe it was too little, too late. The wasteland called her name, delivering a punishment for all her former sins. There was no more running.

She 'mrmmrphed!' futilely into her gag; the terrible creature not at all afraid of her, despite their cowardly natures. Her body moved, but not well enough. Not strong enough, not agile enough, not anything enough. She reasoned the creature gave her some kind of death kiss while she slept. Only now, with paralyzation wearing off, had she managed to awaken at all. It was just enough to allow her to 'feel' everything.

No matter what she did, the web creaked and stretched, but returned her to zero as the spider seemed bemused by her struggling. Resistance turned to indignation and soon, fear. Alone, she couldn't fight it off like this. It wasn't a battle she awoke to, but the realization of the wasteland calling her name and delivering the justice she long ran from.

She knew not the motives of the beast. Mutant animals were unpredictable. Intelligent. Nasty. There was only a few ways this could go and all of them were horrible. Most of them resulted in a lingering period of suffering, perhaps no more than two or three days. Some ended quickly. A scant few were long term commitments. Out of options and knowing the creature likely would suck the life out of her after a lengthy period of wrapping her up and further poison, with great reluctance, she took the only option that might grant her a fighting chance in the long term; parting wide her other leg in the process and hoping she could be useful to this ghoul in some other way that didn't result in fatal death kisses. She was glad no one else would ever know to see it, should the thing choose that...

None but the wasteland, which called her name. If death were easy in the barren lands, then redemption was gold itself.