Strips
Tall Tank Tales
Pre-Tank
There is no easy way to get clean without water. Seems like only yesterday when i was a kid, and i could sit in the tub for an hour, splashing about, playing with boats, my battalions of soap, my mum coming in every now and again to see what i was up to. I can remember my last bath, it was the morning before the comet hit, we were all oblivous of what was happening, and wasting water as fast as the g’damn sand blows around here on any given day.
I dream about water, every night, long dreams of lovely H20. Waterfalls, oceans, swimming pools, hot tubs, long baths, and oh, my favorite, the shower. I wake up and want to lick the sweat off myself from tossing about all night, but i knock back a warm beer instead, imagining it is a cold glass of sweet water. Reality sucks, this sand that gets in every fucking crevice of my body sucks, the saving grace is sucking down a cigarette and a good shag with Booga. Chattering on to you, deranged reader, is not too bad a thrill, either. You sit there, idly, probably fresh out of the shower, maybe have been out for a swim in the ocean, and here I am, stuck in this foul desert of a planet, life is a cruel bitch.
I used to surf, oh yah, i was bloody good, too. My dad started me when i was barely old enough to walk. Mum used to get pretty mad, but he would get out the board, and we would tackle some small waves, me up in his arms, watching the surf curl around us. Pretty soon I was on my own board, it was hot pink, i remember the way it felt beneath my feet, my toes curled tight, the water sliding across, the joy of dumping, the waves rolling over me, beneath them briefly, me oblivious to the world. My dad let me go out on my own by the time i was 12. I could kick the ass of any boy on my stretch of the beach. They thought they were hot shite, and I would let them think it, until we had paddled out far, our boards picking up, and then I was tight on that surf, right in the curl, and they would have their mouths hanging open, and I would laugh my little ass all the way bck to the beach. Dad won a lot of bets that way! I was getting to be pretty hot when the comet came, and the beach became a salty, fetid patch that stunk like death. Fuckin’ comet.
Seein’ as the water was gone, I turned my attentions to land activities. Of course, I ripped at skateboarding, it was not as smooth as surfing, but you couldn’t do as many fun tricks on a surfboard, either. I had a Zero back then, a sweet deck that got me out of a lot scrapes with the scum in the area. Once the aftermath of the comet hit, they came out like the bloody plague. I took to carrying a chain, and rode with a bat strapped to my back. Me and the Zero had to do some serious manuevers to get away from these freaks. Nothing was too sleazy for those nasty boys. I learned how to slide nearly every ledge in my neighborhood, and some of the jumps were the only thing that kept me from getting pounded hard. Once that deck broke, i had to search for another, and when i found my Fuct, it was a match made in heaven.
Mum and dad were living off in the S-Zone by then, trying to protect what remained of their world. S-zone was a complex, heavily armed, and full of people just like my folks. They so wanted the earth to be what it was pre-C that they would whatever it took. They had their own TV station going, weather reports droning on, and bullshite newscasts on 24/7. I went to see them now and again, but I think they got flipped when they saw me, I was a reminder of the world they were trying to avoid. Last time I saw them, mum gave me a glass of water she had been saving. The glass jar had been sealed tight, and she cradled it like it was a newborn baby. I sat there for an hour, sipping it, and watching my once gnarly dad go comatose on the couch. He was crushed without his surf, I like to imagine that when the S-zone got hit by the nasty boys, they went down fast, and he was riding the biggest wave of his life. Fuckin’ comet.
Once they were gone, there was nothing keeping me nearby, I strapped the deck to my pack, and ditched the last remains of the suburbs. The fucking oddest thing was looking at all the deserted homes, once the grandest, biggest places around, they were shells now, windows gone, sand blowing through them, every last trace of human inhabitance gone. I made side trips into a lot of them, though, and grabbed cigarettes wherever I could. This was the one thing that seemed to get left behind, why, I have no bloody clue. Once or twice I ran into the nasty boys, first time I lucked out and escaped. There were ten of them, and I would have been one dead chick had they found me. Time after that I was in the basement of a small little house, scrounging in a back room, loading my pack with cigs and an amazing knife when they were right fucking there! I cracked my bat over the head of the big dude, and sent him sprawling. The other punk, tried to grab me and throw me down, but I nailed him on the arm, hard!, snagged my pack, and deck, running so damn fast, jumped on my trusty Fuct, and that was the last house I went into. Too many nasty boys around.