Chapter 3:

The World As I Knew Her

Ivy couldn't remember the last time she felt so sure and yet so horrifically repulsed with herself. It was as if the vindication she received from the ends of her means were meaningless and lost, like a pebble thrown hopelessly down an abyssal well. Its tiny edges falling down into oblivion as the jutting stones of the cylindrical abyss smashed it even further towards its fall. No one was to retrieve it. Nobody wanted to, and yet forces of nature, of stone, were more than willing to let it reach the nadirs of the irradiated earth. And in that eerie thought, she felt a vexing pang of guilt, regret, and remorse, but now with all things passed, she felt even more dignified. To achieve her goal, to attain truth and restore the once salient beauty of the world the earth once knew, she couldn't mollify her ethics and compromise the success of her endeavor. To save something, she deliberated, you need to sacrifice another. In her mind, what the world needed more than sacrifice, were the people who are willing to make sacrifices, to deplore themselves, to fall, and to climb, and to once more leap down only to give way for the ascension of something greater, something more eternal than their ephemeral lives.

The assurance it gave her; the enthusiasm hope fueled into her, almost let her live complacently with her regrets. Yes they were regrets, and she carried them onerously, but they were mere reminders of the costs she was making. It didn't matter that they were now gone from her forever. What mattered was that they were the rudimentary aspects of her life: they made her. They indicated trials, contempt, her vanity, and her humanity, but they were no unstoppable force which demanded for her return. Their temptations were alluring, but not compelling. As far as Ivy knows, they were her identity and they were lost from her. Her own identity is lost from her.

Sometimes, Ivy would enter deep and haunting reveries, which beckoned her to return to the Vault and its confining world. But her mind would diffidently decline, and the only way she could have done this was to repress memories of her forgotten daughter, and the sadness which tinged the thought of her doting husband. Sometimes she would dream, amidst the howling winds of the Wasteland, and the lingering sounds of her past, idyllic dreams. They were quixotic reenactments of her romantic past with her husband, and sometimes serene and slow-moving pictures of her baby daughter. The aurous sun in those dreams perturbed her as she had never seen it until she had left her subterranean home. And yet, its blinding light fit perfectly in those made-up dreams of her daughter, of golden rays creeping into a window as she held a sleeping infant. Those dreams often tantalized her with frozen pictures of a warm family, happy and blissfully unaware so long as they were enveloped by the sun's golden incandescence. Ivy knew she did not deserve such. She had abandoned her family. So why is fate bestowing such beautiful and nostalgic dreams?

Other times, fate was harsh. Her mind would be plagued by dreams of the isolation she grew up with in the Vault. Since the days of her early school, her brilliance was mocked and her theories repudiated. Teachers castigated her, her friends ostracized her, and the Overseer tried obstinately to reform her. In their efforts, they transformed her into a cold-calculating scientist, never fulfilling her love for pre-war literature, which she stole from the Overseer's office frequently, and her dream of restoring the world as her dreams and books described them: an everlasting lush of life and green. Then her dreams would evolve into even more macabre accounts of her past: the murder of physician Jon Rigby and the subsequent hatred for all things suggesting an exodus. People in the Vault never remembered Rigby. They don't remember his death and what it stood for, and not even what he had done. Rigby pleaded with the Overseer to leave. He calculated and predicted its doom, with a faltering filter and unwavering encroachment of radiation. After much rejection, Rigby had confessed to Andale and Ivy his dreams of traveling to a city in the Wasteland, filled with people of erudition. They couldn't discern how Rigby had known of this city of science, of a city which floated upon the bay of a once great capital. They merely doubted him. Now after all those years, after the birth of her daughter, and imminent signs of doom, she left to pick up where he left off. Ivy will no longer forget Rigby's death and let it be in vain.

"What will you get from leaving?! It's preposterous Ivy! Please don't leave!" Andale's voice pleaded relentlessly. His eyes wept a thousand tears of please, but she merely turned the other cheek and gazed solemnly upon their daughter.

"I have to go Andy. We both have to. We can take her with us… It'll be better to leave now and save what we can than to sit here and wait for something to happen…" Her answer was cold and emotionless. Andy could trace no sympathy and he hated her for it. After moments of staring her down with lugubrious gazes and then with menacing glares, he scoffed and faced his back towards his wife. The frustrated doctor proceeded to their room and left his wife there, thinking she would follow, but he did not know that would be the last time he would talk to her. The last and final time he shared a moment with her, even after 9 years of waiting. In the end, only death awaited him, and now his wife resides in a floating, dilapidated city, thinking of how their reunion would be if there ever was one. Unbeknownst her, this man whom she loved so terribly was now gone, and all she has left in the world is an enslaved daughter, hoping that the one family she has left is still searching for her.

"Claire…" The word left her weary lips with an air of nostalgia and yet with disgust, disgust for herself. How could she have left her with no qualms? The thought plagued her indeed, but to Ivy it seems that days went on without full conscientious guilt, and its ominous memories never marred any part of her mind or matter. She regretted it and it ended there.

She looked around, her vicinity as bare as her heart, yet as ugly as her mind. It was filled with empty memories tenaciously lingering, just as her brain constantly inundates itself frequently with unwanted memories and nightmares. But what was tangible, the dilapidated metal and buildings; the howling breezes, the burnt dust; everything was barren. There was nothing new or fruitful to be left in this world, just as there are none in her heart. Anything palpable and good had abandoned Ivy. It was gone since her exodus from the Vault. It was gone since her severance of her family ties. It was and has been gone since Rigby died…

"You say something Red?" The raider's sardonic remark interrupted her train of thought to a crashing halt. In alleviating her pain, Ivy had entered into deep reverie, ignoring the presence of the few raiders who tortured and hurt her. They were subtly located between jutted rocks and vermillion-coated sand, fenced by dilapidated cars and buildings, mostly skeletons of what they used to be. The raider chewed violently on a wrinkly, old un-burnt cigarette while his wrinkly, old eyes glowered at her constrained body, chained down to the ground seeping in their past victims' blood. The raider was old, about 30. Most raiders abandon that lifestyle (or die) once they hit mid 20s. This renegade life of violent anarchism, rapine, massacres, and kidnapping could only be handled by the misguided impulsiveness of youth, and most of the time, they resent people outside their age group. They usually commit the murderous act of expulsion or the cruel indifference of abandonment. But not Sid. Sid was old and incompetent, but his younger peers somehow enjoy his sadistic presence. He took a special liking to Ivy, dubbing her Red after her conspicuously auburn hair. It was a color that fascinated his prurient mind, often exercising his fetishes upon her, raping her, while taking complete care of her hair. Ivy ardently hated Sid. She hated his unspeakable transgressions and especially his exploitation of her. When the other raiders wanted to kill her, he insisted on keeping her as a "pet" though she never understood why when they often encounter female wanderers. Ivy was 39, almost 40. Her beauty was already withering by the day, and her deplorable life worsened her physique. She realized months before that each day she aged and sullied, the closer they came to killing her.

Sid approached her, licking his chap lips and groping her face with his grimy, corpulent fingers. "What's the matter? Didn't get enough of me?"

Ivy kept staring at him, but Sid knew she wasn't even looking at him. Her eyes bore into his being and darted past into the horizon behind him, as if he wasn't there obstructing the view. Sid hated this habit of hers. Whether it was inadvertent or not, he didn't care. He just hated it. He'd rather her show contempt, it was a fetish of his to rape struggling and impetuous women, but lately Ivy seems to read him like a book and her eyes' indifference towards his presence annoyed him.

Aggravated, the bellicose raider slapped Ivy, with the palm of his hand biting at her skin like a venomous snake. Her head remained lowered, indignantly refusing to look up at him. Aggravated even more, he grabbed her chin and raised her eyes to meet his, but they never met him. Her gray, sullen eyes bore once more right through him, as if he wasn't there. Sid snarled and eventually left her alone, going off into the tents his fellow raiders fashioned. He left her out there, to be eaten by a rabid dog, mole rat, Yao Guai… he didn't care. He couldn't stand her apathy anymore. He really had to kill her, but for the sake of his innate, disgusting pleasures, he spared her for one more day. Until he can find an adequate replacement, Ivy would have to remain the subject of his lascivious desires.

*

Eli was a peculiar raider. Considered 2nd in command in their 6-man group, the other raiders left him alone. At first his disquieting introversion and insolent silence towards his camaraderie disturbed them to the point that they wanted to kill him. It would've been so much easier to take his life and eradicate his disconcerting existence. However, many years before when Eli was a boy of 9 and recently christened as a raider after he killed one of his captors, another one in charge of the group furtively stole him to a secluded area and tried to execute him for revenge. The next morning, the raider's companions searched for him only to find his dismembered body scattered all over the ground and a little boy sitting in the garnet pool of his blood, eating his head.

No one bothered Eli afterward, neither did they notice that he wasn't even a cannibal and had been inclined to eat the carcasses that they find. Now, years afterward, Eli was now a man of 17, notorious amongst other raiders for his tendency to grab female wanderers, strip them of their clothes, and meticulously dismember them. Another raider found him drawing perfect lines across a captured woman's shaking body, her eyes drenched with an unexplained fear as she realizes she became the "plaything" of this boy's macabre desires. After he was done "blue-printing" them, he would take a rusty, dull saw and slowly cut through the skin with extreme dexterity and surgical precision, letting blood squirt out violently, the victim's body protesting against his whims. In one of his escapades, a fellow raider caught him performing sexual rites with a dismembered pelvis of one of his victims. This rumor is yet to be dignified.

When Eli saw Ivy, he couldn't be anymore repulsed with her age and impertinent attitude. He has never spoken a word to this hag of a woman, but immediately could read her thoughts just as he reads his victims' thoughts out of a sadistic habit. Eli saw within her a purpose, a frightening goal. He dared not touch her due to an unexplained fear of what might become of him. When he attempted unleashing his desires upon her (after much persuasion of Sid) he was appalled to find a horrendous scar across her belly, the mark of a difficult birth. He lost interest in her afterwards. He preferred his victims unscathed. Something about her made him feel extremely weak, almost human-like, a pang he never experienced before. Ivy's arrogant and yet somehow overpowering countenance induced a feeling of discord and frightening contempt towards him. If he hadn't been sick and twisted monster, he would've acted in deference towards her, worshipping the very ground she walked and toiled for within her lay humanity as he has never seen in the Wasteland. Eli feared her for this. He felt queasy, his skin dangerously paling at the thought of even harming her. Something about her repelled his existence, debilitating it to point of revealing his true nature: a coward, a charlatan, and a little, helpless boy. Eli wanted her gone.

"We should sell her to some Slavers… It'll do us good than keeping her alive and having to give her some of our food."

The other raiders looked at him inquiringly, puzzled by his peculiar behavior. To them, Eli was the quintessential introvert, never uttering more than what he needed to utter, answering questions in less than 2 syllables. Sid immediately cast a Vulcan glare, his eyes piercing with the scorching tips of vermillion flames, their intensity silently erupting with displeasure. Yet his face remained frowning, understating the level of his annoyance. His mouth grumbled in unintelligible words.

"Why the fuck should we? We don't even fuckin' need the caps…"

The rest of the group sat in consternation, uncharacteristic of the infamous belligerent anarchists. They sat waiting for a vulgar rebuttal from either of their most feared members. It would've been easy to say that they had no leader. Raiders did not follow. They wrought chaos, but Eli and Sid were anomalies in their strange world of impulses. Beneath their brusque and irascible countenances, they were socially perturbing and their eccentricities emanated with foreboding signs of danger. They merely stayed with them because they were afraid of them.

After much silence, Eli looked up to his peers, his eyes a dark pool of ravenous black, waiting to drown anyone lost in his pernicious gaze. "We don't need an ugly, old hag sucking your dick for our food either…" His whisper came soft yet ascended in a petrifying crescendo. Everyone suddenly huddled closer to the comfort of the cackling flame, its scarlet rays casting mocking shadows upon their frightened faces. "Now Imma' go to Paradise Falls tomorrow with that hag and I'm sellin' her."

Sid shot up in indignant silence, his eyes glowering even more towards the younger man. From where he stood across the fire, Sid resembled an obscenely grotesque tower. His shaved head, pierced face, and inked body all formed an diabolical face whose eyes burned with the force of the infernos of hell. "If you start thinkin' you own this god damn place and that you own any god damn one of us, I'm gonna fuckin' bleed your guts out until you scream just like your little toys… begging to be killed."

All was quiet afterwards, with nothing but the eerie vibrations of contempt and acrimony pervading the atmosphere. Eli took one last bite at his roasted dog, and deftly threw it into the fire, his hands barely moving with sound or effort. But his eyes were fixated upon the imposing Sid, his standing figure appearing stalwart to their sitting faces. Eli, however, was not afraid. In fact he had plans. Moments later, everyone retired to their "beds" of metal and soiled cloth, relieved that the friction during their dinner was over and forgotten.

The next morning, the raiders caught Eli already on his way to Paradise Falls with Ivy chained as he dragged her down the road. Near the fire lay a mutilated Sid. His corpse hung by the feet above the fire place where Eli fashioned a pole tall enough to hold Sid roasting above the flames. The raiders merely looked in complacent fear and moved on to follow Eli.

*

Sybil looked on indifferently as she watched the Slavers crowd over an adolescent girl, maybe of 14 or 12 no one knew. She lay naked, her body forming supple breasts and slight curves upon her waste. All the slavers, with their libidinous eyes fixated upon their victim, took their turns with her body, deciding that she would be the subject of their warped affections. The other children refused to watch and merely gazed at the rusted walls of their cages, their hands digging vigorously at their ears to block the disquieting sound of the girls' unheard screams. They wanted to ignore what their fate could've been had things been different. They wanted to hope that somehow they will return where they were, into a world they once knew.

"What's wrong with this one?" said the guards who refrained from their grisly festivities. He looked curiously at Sybil who watched the atrocious scene, not with fascination or anger, but with an insolent apathy. It was as if the girl being raped did not exist and her screams did not pierce the ambience of the dilapidated fortress. Sybil's transparent gaze brought an encroaching discomfiture into his heart. He was suddenly afraid of her, afraid that if he hurt her, something horrendous would creep into his life to haunt him forever. She was very strange.

Suddenly, Sybil averted her eyes towards the towering guard, now exchanging the inquisitive glance. "What's wrong with you?"

The guard wanted to slap her for such a brazen remark, but he decided it wasn't worth unlocking the cage to do the deed. She was an impudent child, awaiting her doom. That was all. But she did not stop at that. Sybil cocked her head at the guard's diffidence, reading his thought and his reluctance to enforce authority upon her.

"You watch on… You watch them do what they do, but you do not follow. You stand here, content watching over us, ignoring your latent impulses.

The guard kept an impassive pretense, but Sybil inevitably discerned the trepidation which rocked his body, the fear she had instilled in him. He felt himself drowning in her voracious words, their syllables drenching his ears with torture and evil. He couldn't keep still and conspicuously shook. He ran on to the distance, away from the horrid girl.

The guard stopped by the entrance where he caught a young raider dragging by chain an emaciated woman with auburn hair, her face streaked with brown irradiated dust, and her sullen eyes imploring for liberation. The guard could not understand the connection between the girl and this new woman. He did not want to know. All he could understand was that he was afraid of both of them. He did not understand why the other Slavers couldn't feel it, when they were emanating with something evil, something born from a world different than theirs.