Strips
Tall Tank Tales
Girl in a Gown
All I wanted was a fuckin’ dress...
You’d think I asked for a million dollars or sparkling water! I just want to get the filth off my body and put on something resembling an outfit. Not the trodden fatigues pulled from dead soldiers. Yeah, I complain too much, but its tough to sift through shit all day and realize that's all there is - shit!
Everything is difficult to plan, cause we’re always on the move these days. If you can find a shower, we’ll never use the same one twice. Always moving around. But what I really want is a dress. Just so I can feel like a fucking girl for two damn seconds! But life moves on...
The tank drew to a halt. Booga looked around and surmised that our trusty compass had once again led us in a large circle.
"We camped here three days ago", he stated, "I lost the bar-b-q sauce and here it is again!"
"What good fortune", I belted and reached for the bottle of sauce.
"Drop that bottle", came a loud voice.
Picking up the bottle I turned and saw a woman of about 40 years although she looked like she’d been kicked a few times. And she had a gun. I wasn’t sure what kind - only that it was a gun and it was pointed at my chest.
"Watchit, Dear", Booga cooed nonchalantly.
"I see her", I said pulling my trigger.
"Listen Bitch... I’ve only shot you once because I’m a nice person", I stated as plainly as I could without losing demeanor or control of the situation.
"Being nice is no permanent condition. In fact it can change at a moment’s notice", I continued.
"Honey", Booga interrupted. "Tell her about the numerous others you’ve killed for far lesser reasons."
"So you get the point, right?"
The woman lay on the ground bleeding. She seemed to be warming up to me, yet she had made no real gestures of friendship.
I considered shooting her again.
"My name is Helga", spattered the woman in a painful stutter.
"I knew a Helga once!" I chimed.
"I believe she was a whore at the club in downtown", Booga offered.
We questioned Helga about her past as a whore - a point she vigorously denied despite her bullet wound. We also learned that she was not a smoker nor drinker and could not provide us with any of our favorite vices. Booga though it might be good to shoot her again... to see what else she might tell us.
Finally she came up with a useful piece of information. She used to work in the garment district outside Sydney.
"Well fuck Woman!" I yelled. "Why didn’t you tell us that in the first place?"
"Could have saved you a bullet wound", I smiled.
"She was stealing our bar-b-q sauce", Booga reminded me.
"Oh yeah".
Helga’s assertion was that the Magistrate’s daughter was to wed a fine gentleman. The marriage would have occurred had it not been for that pesky comet killing everyone and destroying civilization as we knew it.
"This is getting better and better", I remarked to Booga in an excited voice.
The dress she was to wear had been labored over for months in an effort to complete the garment in time. Due to it’s special nature, it was coveted in an underground vault where workers would measure and sew for days on end.
"I can’t fucking believe this! It’s PERFECT!", I cheered.
This was absolutely too good to be true. It had better be for Helga’s sake!
Booga and I had been wanting to get married for quite some time now, but we were either on the run or too lazy to get things together. Weddings were not too common these days. People mostly just clung to each other for survival. Love had a strange way of vacating most situations; post-comet, that is. Booga and I seemed rare exceptions to this post-apocalyptic rule. We were good for each other, to each other and rilly rilly loved each other. And today our fortune had changed... I managed to shoot a woman who could lead me to a dress - a wedding dress! This called for a celebration!
As we worked through our stash of beer and cigarettes we laughed like we hadn’t in years. Everything had a fine new tint to it. Everything felt just right.
CLUNK!!!
"What the hell was that?" I yelled as Booga leapt out of bed with a baseball bat.
"Know soon enough", he said as he disappeared from my view.
Soon I heard a new sound. A repetitive sound.
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
I come to find Booga swatting Helga over the head with a small tree branch - thankfully not the bat.
Helga was trying to make a daring escape. Strange - we promised not to kill her. Anyway... she managed to slip from the ropes around her wrists, but in her haste she knocked over Booga’s grill. The tree branch pummeling she was receiving was mostly due to her carelessness about the grill although I doubt she knew that or cared for that matter.
Once Booga had beaten a sense of responsibility into Helga and explained his passion for outdoor grilling, we went back to bed - and slept soundly.
Until morning...
At first light - around noon - Booga fired up the grill and made his specialty, breakfast hotdogs. I sat on Helga’s chest and mapped out a route to finding my wedding dress, while she grunted out directions. I couldn’t figure what made her so grumpy. Afterall, MY wedding dreams were coming to fruition. Seems to me she could be a little bit happy for us.
We fired up the tank and made tracks for Helga’s garment district and MY FUCKING DRESS! Her directions were good and we ploughed through at a furious rate. As children and seniors jumped out of our way - sure are a lot of people in metropolitan areas - I knew their misplaced curses were really well-meant accolades for Booga and me.
On site we located the building that housed the vault containing my dress. Funny how I refer to it as MINE even though we haven’t determined if any of Helga’s story is true. She may be leading us on a wild goose chase or just using us for her own gain.
But if she were that wily, we’d likely have shot her again by now.
We cleared some rubble away from the entrance and proceeded to the basment hoping the structure wouldn’t cave in on us. By torch light we went down a winding path until we reached what Helga said was the vault.
The vault... Ok why the fuck is this thing called a vault, anyway? To store a fucking dress? What kind of dress could it be and what the fuck is a Magistrate? Sounds asexual, yet he had a daughter to be wed. Very odd...
So, the vault lay just ahead. In the dim light we could see the cracked entrance and the door we would have to remove. Booga went back to the tank to retrieve some dynamite. I remarked to Helga how we never seemed to have enough beer or cigarettes, but we were always laden with ammo and explosives. I attribute it to our writer, but Helga seemed indifferent to the entire scenario.
Booga returned and we attached a fuse to the dynamite, lit it and ran.
BOOM!!
When the smoke cleared Helga brought up an interesting point. What if we just blew up the dress? She cowered as she realized we didn’t need to hear this factoid after the fact.
Fortuanately, we did not blow up the dress.
More importantly, when we got out of the building and into some decent light, we actually could see the dress. It was beautiful! I can’t even describe it - mostly because I’m not that much of a fuckin’ girl! But suffice to say, I loved it!
Booga and I had our wedding. It was a gala affair, full of friends, family and Rippers! We danced, drank and had a fuckin’ blast!
I looked stunning in my stolen dress and Helga looked fat and gross in her bridesmaid dress, but it was nice of her to join us. Actually, we threatened our way into convincing her to stage the entire event for us. Never underestimate a positive attitude and superior firepower.
In the end, I got a few cigarette burns on my dress, but what-the-fuck - it was free! And very few brides look this good with a mohawk!
Now the only thing left to do is start a family!