Seldom Seen Kid

 "Green liquids substitute my feelings. And no fucking more shall I feel or shall I surrender. This is such a shit Apocalypse. It's all gone to shit. Shit, shit, shit." I rambled to the barkeep who flatly ignores my speech and fills up my glass again. The bastard evidently didn't understand. Why should he? He's an idiot trying to survive in uncertain times. He must hear all this post-extermination rambling bollocks all the time. Must get annoying after a bit. I know if I had to personally do it, I'd just start punching them repeatedly in the face.

That old world has been destroyed. We're no longer in temporal validity. The world's fallen apart at the seams. Africa is a wasteland. Asia and Russia has been bombed to oblivion by glorious forces. Our world is no longer overpopulated. From 6 billion to under thirteen million. Lots of problems solved in one, I guess. Horseman's wet dream. Triumph! Victory!. Vainfuckingglorious! Hooray! Give me a flag and I'm just like everyone else. I'll wave it, be angry at those I need to. Blend in. Blend in as a dead man walking.

What does my existence prove anyway? That they are fallible? But, I am nothing and no more. No, wait, less than that. A would-be man, but no more than that. I am no more of a man than I am atoms or chemicals or neurons. I am a nothing man. A nobody boy. Just a fucking corpse, doing what i need to. Of course, I am fighting more than that. Being an ex-journo has it's bonuses and I'm a dying breed. I'm like those things...Pandas I think. Big, dumb, hairy, sexless twats of animals. Sounds like me alright.

Hunched over my drink, a soft touch hits my shoulder. It's Hammond. Another nobody man. I saw him fall from the stars, the layers of hubris and glory, through the walls of despair and destruction. Poor bastard, poor bastard. I had nothing really to lose and he lost it all. His wife and kids cut away like dead blooms on a rosebush - or so I heard. I don't know what happened to them. He became a mate, back when this struggle was new. But times and locations change and I hadn't seen him since I heard they disappeared. He pulled up a stool beside me and orders a drink. The hyper-liquid filled the glass's corners before he tipped it back and orders another, slamming some tattered dollars on the side.

"You're meant to be bloody dead." His words, not mine. They could have be mine. He could be equally dead but the statistics in my head somewhat dictate otherwise.The words were soft but harsh. Clinical. Some bedside manner, that Hammond. "They had a public execution of all the "dangerous people" and you were meant to be one of them."

I sighed, sipping the drink as it leaves a tidal mark of grease on the roof of my mouth. It's times like those, I really fucking miss Jack Daniels."I know. I'm just ever so fucking good at hide and seek. Those bastards aren't gonna stop me." His lip curled over, drinking a little more. Social protocol seems for me to explain but I cock it up instead. "I'm...I'm sorry about Mi-"

I deserved the punch in the face, I really did. Hammond is a short bloke but bloody hell, he can move quickly. Like some rodent-whippet hybrid. There was a cold anger there. Misdirected. Victim. Poor sod. He pushed his knee into my chest, holding his empty glass threateningly. There was a cold silence around us. I think humans always feel somewhat entertained by violence like this and well, television just isn't what it used to be.

"You don't fucking deserve to say her name. She was a columnist of some women's magazine, giving out criticism of my midlife crisis, the kids and how to make life perfuckingfect like it used to be. And they killed her-"

"That's not my fault, Hammond. That’s not my fucking fa-“

"And you have the indecency, the balls to escape solo and worm out your fucking shit life! You! Journalist, cartoonist and the biggest satirizing cunt this side of the Atlantic!" his voice was loud now and the bar had stopped working. Pushing his knee closer to my windpipe, he seemed to dare me. Dare into what? Dares dares and oblivion, it seemed. his voice when lower, gravelly. "And you're still at it."

"I'm part of the Resistance. I fight culturally. I take photographs of the camps. I write against the powers that be. I report the truth. I draw the truth. I am the truth. And the truth is Hammond, I didn't know she was in there. And if you were in there, escape is the only fucking option. " I muttered, enough for him to hear but...its suicide. I know that. Kamikaze. He seems to understand that and he stood up. We both sit in our respective chairs and what passes for normalcy continues around us. I like a crowd, so easy to lose yourself in. Too easy, perhaps. I sigh, knowing I have to say the obvious.

"What do you want?" He bought himself another drink before turning to me to answer.

"I want...I want to start a new cell. But at the moment, I just need to get somewhere safe for a bit, so it can die down. So they can rest their laurels so to speak. I'm...I'm...skint. And-"

"Where are you going?" I asked, trying to avoid the elephant in the room.

"Scotland."

"Scotland's a nuclear waste ground. All you'll get there is radiation sickness and robbed blinded by mutated sheep."

"Not in Inverness. It's safe in Inverness," he sighed and looked at me pleadingly, his brown eyes wider than spaceships. "You're wanted by the law. Ten thousand dollars dead or alive. You don't want to live. We've all heard the stories of you graffiting the British Senate House..."

"Westminster." I spat, choosing to ignore where it was going.

"You've written scathing letters to all the newspapers. You just admitted in front of a room of sodding strangers that you're a follower of Clarkson..."

"I resent that remark!" I suddenly turned on him, whispering angrily. "He might be a good mate of yours but he is as bad as the others. I'm a freelance Resistance member. I follow no cunt." he winced at these words and I suddenly felt sorry I said them.

"Am I right or wrong?" he stared at me venomously. He was old before his time. I'm older than him and yet he's the one with the wrinkles and twitches. I didn't reply and he takes it as a yes.

"Am I to understand that you hit me for maybe not rescuing your maybe captured wife and you have the audacity to try and bargain with me over my own bloody life?" He nodded, saying nothing. I rubbed my temples, watching him carefully. He was right, in a sense. He has so much more to give and I'm already a dead man. We're all judged by our acts with or against humanity, just look at Simon Cowell - that traitorous git. If the Resistance found out about him selling me up the river, they'd murder him themselves. Hence why I don't follow Clarkson.

"How would it work? Surely you know you're putting your own neck on the line for that?" He looked at me in irritated curiosity.

"I know someone who can do it for me. She'd collect the money, split it with me and she can spend it in the small amount of time she has left." Noticing my confused expression, he added "Terminal cancer. Few months at most." After all the death around me and people still die of shit like that. It's such a mindfuck. You just assume everyone dies at the end of a gun.

"Perhaps," I softly spoke. "Perhaps it would be better to die a martyr than a coward." His eyes - those brown, brown soft eyes - widened with joy and a certain sorrowfulness at the deed he was doing. We've seen it all before. Judas. Silver. The whole old crap drama and I never thought that I would be the "good" one in that bargain. But then again, there is no good people.

"Thank you. Really, thank you!" he grinned, suddenly rictus. I nodded slowly, mulling my fate in the bottom of the glass.

I could see nods everywhere, reflected in that glass. Nods signing the death warrant. Nods in the street, spit streaks, rotten vegetables, screaming. Smoke filled streets, smog of hell. Nods nodding their last as they drag me up the stairs, making my last movements nodding.

And I? Having the last laugh, reciting old poetry to the wind for that man who did it to me. that sort of revelation is good, you see. It is very good. Cause at least, at least I would have helped someone, in the end, instead of just criticising from the bench.