Tevun-Krus #29 - Punk Wars!

Bad News In Twin Snake Burl - A Short Story by @MadMikeMarsbergen

BAD NEWS IN TWIN SNAKE BURL

PART ONE: FORGET THE THREAT

1

KEITH Cunningham didn't want to lose his memory.

Not again.

Those bastards thought they could just make everything go away, didn't they? Each and every time a terrorist attack struck Peburia, they thought a little pill would solve the problem. Make people forget anything had happened so they could go on with their lives, oblivious and unaware. No worries, people, just forget the threat. But Keith was tired of that song and dance.

And he didn't know why, but the damn pills didn't seem to work for him like they did for other people, anyway. Because he'd caught on, you see. It seemed like each time he took their pill—and, fuck, it seemed he'd taken hundreds of them—a ghost of a memory lingered, haunting his mind in his dreams and beyond. He'd get flashes. Visions. Usually while taking a dump, or something equally as contemplative. Keith would relive each attack with such nauseating clarity, whether it'd been seen via his box or the few he'd witnessed in person.

And this latest act of terrorism he'd seen in person.

Keith squeezed his fists until his knuckles cracked. His mind replayed what he'd just seen, trying to make sense of it as the shock cleared from his system.

He'd been grabbing a hotdog from the cart outside the building where he worked—ElektriCorp—when some scumbags from DiesoMax blew up the whole bloody block. Body parts went flying. So did his hotdog. He saw the vendor go from smiling, to spraying blood from every orifice he had (and even some he didn't), to a vaporized pile of ash in seconds. Keith'd been lucky to've survived. The concrete around him was ripped up. Cars—most of them electric—lay upside-down, violently contorted. And the stench of diesel, mixed with scorched flesh and twisted metal, filled the air. That's how he knew it had been DiesoMax: the diesel-made bombs, which they called bioblasts.

The other few survivors picked their stunned, bloodied asses up from the street. One man had had his arm heat-sutured to the concrete—he'd left behind a wet red patch of skin.

It was then that Keith became aware of the screaming. And the anti-terror bots—still running on steam—telling everyone to stay calm and eat a Happy Pill, shooting those forget-me-now tablets into the mouths of any and all law-abiding citizens.

But not Keith.

No, sir. Not this time. I've had enough. Can't take this shit anymore.

He snapped back to reality and started running from the site, jumping over trash barrels and heading for home. Leaving behind the chaos of today and tomorrow. Those DiesoMax cunts. Not to say ElektriCorp was entirely innocent in the whole shitfest—he distinctly remembered seeing them launching terrorist attacks on DiesoMax, too. But as to the question of who started the whole corporate rivalry to begin with? Fuck if he knew.

Keith's house was near the base of Mount Pebusa. Though he owned a company car, he lived near enough to his workplace that he didn't drive to work. The modest white bungalow was up ahead, his sporty electric car in the driveway. He raced by the neighbours who'd come out of their homes, obviously drawn out by the blast, and flung open the front door to his place. Immediately, his ElektriCorp-manufactured appliances urged him to take a pill.

"Oops! That was a bad thing to see, wasn't it?" his box told him from the living-room. "Here, take a Happy Pill and stay happy!"

Then his stove: "Oops! That was a bad thing to see, wasn't it? Here, take a Happy Pill and stay happy!"