Wasteland

Sweat poured down Faye Blood’s dark skin like a desert rain. Her fiery red hair was pasted to her forehead like horse glue. Her eyes were bloodshot. Her baggy white pants were draining even more sweat her already exhausted legs. Her orange monk’s sash clung to her upper body like a wrestler’s bear hug. Then again, all of this was to be expected from wandering the wastelands with a short supply of water and a hunched over body. The sun’s rays punished Faye’s body to where everything hurt. And to think, this much foot travel was all in the name of making a pilgrimage.

Pilgrimage? What kind of cruel and sadistic god would ever encourage his followers to walk aimlessly through these unforgiving sands? Couldn’t said deity at least have the decency to splurge for some camels? What about barrels of ice cold water and buckets of dry rations, was that asking too much as well? Faye would be lying if she said these thoughts hadn’t crossed her mind at least one time. But as quick as they haunted her, she pushed them back out of devotion to Salaam, the God of Benevolence. Her religious zeal trumped any complaints she had about doing this much exercise in one day.

The things Faye Blood would do at that moment for even a teardrops of fresh, nearly frozen water. She could strangle somebody. She could disembowel them. She could commit genocide and completely ruin her zealous track record with Salaam. An hour of zombie-like walking later and she would have two reasons for sudden violence. Just to make sure it wasn’t a mirage, Faye rubbed her eyes with balled up fists. With clear vision, no, this wasn’t a heatstroke-induced illusion.

What Faye saw at that moment could have been described as sensually pornographic, even from her outside perspective. A blue tent had been pitched and judging from the shadows of the two occupants, a man and a woman, there was some serious hanky-panky going on in there. The dominant male rained kisses upon his lovely female and touched her in places that made her squeal with delight and giggle with pleasure.

She didn’t have a whole lot to puke up, but if Faye did, she would spill her breakfast, lunch, and dinner all over the desert ground. Public display of affection was more disgusting to her than a battlefield full of dead bodies. To make matters worse, the male in the tent opened what looked like a bottle of water and was pouring it all over the female’s chest and face, causing her to arch up in orgasmic ecstasy.

Now Faye was pissed off. That was valuable water that could have gone to anybody dying of thirst in this god forsaken land. Instead it was being used for a cheap aphrodisiac between two equally cheap people. The monk’s fists were clinched and her muscles were tensed. Any tiredness she felt beforehand was replaced with energetic rage. Adrenaline pumped through her veins like the river she so desperately wanted to drink from.

The religious warrior stomped over to the tent and jerked it open with one frustrated rip. The lusty couple jumped backwards in surprise and scrambled to put their clothes back on. All the male had to put back on was a black mesh tank top while the female had a black leather breastplate. Their lower halves were completely covered with black baggy pants and black combat boots.

Faye actually allowed these two the time they needed to dress just by standing there in her muscle-tensing pose with the ripped tent still in her balled up fists. She couldn’t stand looking at them half-naked anymore. She didn’t care how smooth and toned their “sexy” bodies were or how lovely their long hair looked. Faye was thirsty. Whether she was thirsty for water or blood was a question that couldn’t be answered just by looking at her viciously angry pose.

“I could snap both of your necks right now and nobody would even try to find you two nitwits,” said Faye through gritted teeth. “If you’re not going to use that water intelligently, then at least give it to someone who will. Show me where you keep your jugs of water and I’ll be on my way.”

The male paramour, identified as Marco Torres, drew a rather long blade from its leather sheath and said in a smooth Spanish accent, “Hold on a second, babe. Who the hell do you think you are interrupting a beautiful thing like lovemaking?”

“Trust me, macho-nacho,” said Faye. “There’s nothing beautiful about wasting water just so your little harlot over here can have a fifteen-hour orgasm.”

The female paramour, identified as Rook Maxwell, drew a claymore from its sheath and heaved up a metal tower shield before saying, “Now sugar bear, if it’s water that you want, you don’t have to threaten to rip our heads off. By all means, you can have as much as you want. You’re not getting it from those jugs, though. This kind of water comes from spending seven minutes in heaven with the two of us!”

Faye instantly knew where the source of “water” was supposed to be and screamed in disgust while covering her ears with her palms. She then sang an agonized, tone-deaf version of “La-la-la-la-la!” before Marco and Rook got annoyed and lunged at her full force.

The two lovers swung their respective blades full force and made heavy “woosh” noises as Faye Blood cart wheeled and back flipped out of the way of these deadly strikes. With two people attacking her at once, Faye couldn’t find a split second of offence and spent most of this battle acrobatically dodging attacks. If she kept moving around this quickly for much longer, she would have another reason to collapse in exhaustion other than her desert travels.

As Faye continued to tuck, roll, flip, and fly out of the way of Marco and Rook’s tireless slashes, the monk noticed how they were concentrating only on the upper half of her body. Therefore, Faye did the splits and went down low with five knuckles of death right into Marco’s testicles.

The Spanish thug doubled over and howled in a raspy voice before dropping to his knees and rolling around on the ground. With him dispatched of, it was only Rook Maxwell swinging her heavy blade at Faye Blood, who continued to flip and fly around the battlefield to avoid getting struck.

Evasion was much easier for Faye with one opponent, but not for long. Rook pointed her lengthy hunk of metal at her opponent and shot little black energy grenades that exploded into smoke. Faye could try to run, but the thick smoke enveloped her and she soon found herself on her knees hacking and wheezing, much worse off than being dehydrated in the desert.

Rook sauntered over to her vulnerable victim with a kinky smile and a clear path through all of her magical smoke. Faye was passing in and out of consciousness by the time Rook waved her sword and blew her own smoke away. The dark paladin held her blade against Faye’s coughing and bloody mouth with the intent to make the final kill.

“Look at it this way, sweetheart: at least now you won’t have to worry about dying of dehydration. I plan on making this as quick as possible, but only because I really like you,” said Rook.

She slowly positioned the blade to Faye’s throat when the monk shakily and languidly made it to her feet. Rook thought this was some kind of last ditch effort, a second wind maybe. But all Faye had to come back with was vomiting in the dark paladin’s face. Blood, ashes, and desert sand filled her stomach with enough contents to make the projectile vomit that much more disgusting.

All of that biological slop was enough to deter Rook Maxwell from carrying out a murder, however. She danced around and clutched her “beautiful” face as the stomach acids burned her eyeballs. Some of it even managed to go down her throat, so she was choking as well.

They weren’t dead, but Faye was satisfied with her combat results long enough to spot jugs of water with her blurry vision. “Must…have…water…” she said over and over again to herself when she crawled on her hands and knees over to the leather skins. She pulled the cork from one of them and chugged like it was her last chance at fresh water. And oh, did it taste fresh. It was like a waterfall of icy coldness soothing her throat and energizing her stomach. Chills went up and down her flesh as she gulped some more. This was heaven to Faye Blood. Pure, wonderful, lovely heaven.

“Thank you, Salaam. Thank you so much!” she said in a prayer position. But soon all of that heavenly coldness turned to drugged dizziness. Her vision was blurry and everything around her was spinning into darkness. The cool sensation was turning to uncomfortable warmth and sweat. Before long, Faye Blood passed out with her face buried in the sand.

It must have been hours before the monk awakened. When she did, she felt so weak and crippled that even opening her eyes took a lot of physical and mental energy out of her. All she could see was Marco Torres’s blurry face looking down on her while he stroked her sweaty hair. Every word he said to her from that point on had a little bit of an echo behind it with some reverberation off the walls of the tent.

“You feel that, my love?” asked Marco in a sensual voice. “That wasn’t water you drank. That was a cask of Salaam’s most magical wine. Granted, it was laced with other lovely drugs, but hey, you wanted to make your pilgrimage to the heavenly lands and now you’re here.”

“Wha…wha…what the fu…”

“Shh-shh-shh! There’s no need for talking, my sweet. Just relax and let Salaam’s holy cocktail wash over you. You often wondered what exactly it was you were traveling to. And this is it, my love. Your priests sent you on this mission to find me. I am Marco Esteban Torres. Rook Maxwell was one of my wives. But she won’t be joining us tonight. Salaam has taken her to a better place. But you, Faye Blood, will make a suitable replacement for my lost fifteenth wife. Welcome to the good life, sweetheart. This is the true definition of Salaam’s Heaven.”

The setup to be Marco Torres’ wife was sealed with a passionate kiss between himself and an unwilling, yet unresponsive Faye Blood. The monk would soon find out what had happened to her this whole time. And when she did, it was doubtful she would be so zealous to her religion anymore. “Fuck you, Salaam. Fuck you badly!” said Faye in her own mind.